Midnight Runaway

by JoAnn Ross

  “Thank you.” She smiled up at him. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

  The dress, as scarlet as sin, should have clashed with her hair, but for some reason didn’t. When someone at the far corner of the room called out her name, she turned and waved, causing the silk to shift enticingly over small, firm breasts.

  “It was worth it.”

  Claren hadn’t wanted to try on the dress, which was so unlike the conservative clothing she usually favored. But Maxine had insisted. That was all it had taken. Standing in front of the dressing room’s three-way mirror, Claren had been stunned by both the amazing transformation in her appearance and the feminine confidence the dress inspired.

  Now, surprised and pleased by the admiration in Dash’s gaze, Claren was glad that she had given in to Maxine’s sales pressure.

  “Did you just give me a compliment?” she asked.

  “I guess I did.”

  Claren digested that and decided that Dash was not a man to flatter lightly. What was it he’d said? That he’d known she’d be a sucker for sweet talk, flowers and candlelight. His tone, at the time, had not been approving.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He’d seen the quick flash of surprised pleasure flood into her eyes and was surprised that it took so little to please her. It made him wonder what kind of fool Byrd was to let this woman get away.

  “I just have one question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you buy it to stir up my juices? Or was it intended for the male population of Port Vancouver in general?”

  His eyes had turned cool, hard and cynical. Refusing to let his rudeness get under her skin, Claren decided to pay him back for the way he had of unsettling her.

  A mischievous devil perched on her silk-clad shoulder and whispered in her ear, advising her to show Dash that she was not the naive runaway bride he obviously perceived her to be, but a woman accustomed to wrapping intriguing, dangerous-looking Casanovas around her little finger.

  Which, of course, was an out-and-out lie. Her scant experience with men had always been centered solely on Elliott, but Dash MacKenzie had no way of knowing that.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I did buy it with you in mind.” She curved her lips in a slow, seductive smile and, ignoring the interested glances from an elderly woman at a nearby table, reached out and trailed her fingernail slowly down the front of his faded blue chambray work shirt. “Is it working?”

  “Move your hand a little lower, sweetheart, and you’ll find out quick enough.”

  Their eyes held. “Are you always this purposely horrid?” Claren asked.

  “Actually, I am. Are you always this beautiful?”

  Prepared for another round in what appeared to be an ongoing battle of wills, Claren found herself distracted by the honest sincerity in his statement.

  She lowered her hand, and her gaze, to her lap. When she finally looked up at him again, her eyes were filled with questions.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  He shrugged. “That’s probably for the best.”

  Claren didn’t think so. “That’s a rather mysterious answer,” she murmured. “But then you’re a rather mysterious man.”

  She was too damn intuitive. Dash was wondering how long he’d be able to fool her when a waitress arrived at their table with his drink.

  Watching the voluptuous bottle-blonde bat her thick, blatantly false lashes at Dash, Claren wondered if there was a female anywhere who could resist this man’s rugged, dangerous looks. Finally getting the waitress’s attention, she ordered a glass of chardonnay.

  A not uncomfortable silence settled over the table. For now Dash was content to just look at her. The vivid hue of the dress enhanced her porcelain complexion. The gleaming silk looked incredibly soft; Dash suspected that her skin would be softer.

  “I like that color. It suits you.”

  Never one to hold a grudge, Claren’s quick grin lit up her eyes, rivaling the glowing candlelight. “I like it, too. Do you know it’s the first bright thing I’ve bought in years?”

  She thought of all her neat little business suits—all stark black except for one sophisticated winter wool in charcoal gray—hanging in the walk-in closet of her aunt’s guest room. She’d worn them as camouflage, Claren realized now, in a desperate attempt to hide the tempestuous person living inside her calm, proper exterior. Well, that predictable, boring woman was gone. And Claren wouldn’t miss her. Not even a little.

  The waitress returned with her wine. Claren murmured a polite thank-you, but since every atom of the woman’s attention was directed at Dash, Claren was not surprised when the waitress failed to answer.

  “It’s funny,” she said when they were alone again, “but I think I know exactly how Superman must feel whenever he takes off his boring old Clark Kent disguise.”

  “Darcy always complained that you spent too much time pretending to be something you weren’t.”

  “I wasn’t pretending,” Claren protested. “Not really.”

  He was staring into her face, studying her with that same unapologetic intensity as before. “Then what do you call it?”

  “Trying to fit in, I suppose.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not me.”

  It was Claren’s turn to study him. She leaned back in the maple captain’s chair and gave him a long, judicious look. No. He wouldn’t. Dash MacKenzie would not bend for anyone, or anything. Instinct told her that he was a loner, a man who preferred distant and less-traveled roads. Having always been close to her uncle, she recognized the all-too-familiar wanderlust in Dash.

  But where Darcy had been open and outgoing, Dash reminded Claren of the Chinese puzzle box her uncle had brought back from Beijing for her fifteenth birthday.

  Dash MacKenzie would not be an easy man to know. He would not be an easy man to love. It was a good thing, Claren decided with a burst of newly discovered optimism, that she’d always loved a challenge.

  Dash watched the slow, womanly smile move across Claren’s lips and wondered at its cause. “What are you thinking?”

  She wondered what he’d do if she told the truth and admitted that she thought she might be falling in love with him, and she decided that he’d take off running before she could finish getting the words out. That was all right. They had plenty of time. And she wasn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately she couldn’t say the same for him.

  “I was thinking about Darcy’s house,” she said.

  She shouldn’t try to lie. Because her face gave her away, every time. Needing to determine what exactly she knew about her uncle’s penchant for treasure hunting, Dash opted not to challenge her on the obvious falsehood.

  “I’d like to see it,” he said nonchalantly.

  “That’s what I was thinking. How good are you with your hands?”

  His eyes skimmed over her face deliberately, a masochistic test of his control. “I can assure you, I’ve never had any complaints.”

  Deep color—the bane of all redheads—flooded into her cheeks. The flickering glow of the candlelight added heat to her hair. Once again Dash was drawn to her. Once again he warned himself away. He couldn’t let his emotions fuddle his logic. For her sake. And his.

  Picking up the menu the flirtatious waitress had set at her elbow, Claren buried her face in it, pretending for a long silent time to be absorbed in the choices. Time crawled at a snail’s pace. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, she risked a glance over the top of the menu. He was still looking at her with that brooding patience she’d come to recognize.

  “You really shouldn’t talk to me like that,” she scolded, wondering how it was that this man, with a single word, one long look, could leave her both baffled and flustered. And wanting. “By tomorrow morning it will be all over town that we’re lovers.”

  “You started it,” Dash reminded her. He ran a lazy finger down the back of her hand. “Besides, would that be so bad?�
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  The storm was building inside her. Dash had been right when he called her a romantic. Before she’d moved out of her apartment, hidden in the drawer of her nightstand had been a cache of romance novels, some of which had been her mother’s. Claren had always enjoyed love stories. So much so, she’d been willing to stand in line outside a theater in the Seattle rain to see Ghost.

  In fiction, falling in love so quickly was always wonderful. Thrilling. Unfortunately she was discovering that in real life it could be terrifying.

  “That it would be all over town?” she asked.

  “That we were lovers.” He took her hand in his, linking their fingers together. “They fit,” he murmured. His smile was slow and seductive. “I thought they might.”

  Claren stared down at their joined hands. She wasn’t prepared for this. She needed time to think. To understand what was happening to her. Twelve years of planning every deed, of censuring every word, of avoiding unseemly attention and any form of confrontation had taken their toll on her. Emotions, feelings, sensations, all were flooding over her, through her, as if escaping from a ruptured dam. It was too much for one day.

  Claren could have wept with relief when the waitress chose that moment to return to take their orders. “I’ll have the shrimp cocktail,” she said, scanning the menu, “and the clam chowder—the New England. In a bowl, not a cup. And the Caesar salad.”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to decide between the salmon and the Dungeness crab. “For an entrée, I think I’ll have the grilled king salmon with chanterelles,” she said finally. “No, the crab. Wait.” She shook her head. “The salmon,” she decided, saving the crab for another day.

  To his credit, Dash didn’t blink an eye at the size of her order. “No dessert?”

  “Good idea. It’s berry season.” Claren smiled up at the waitress. “I’ll look at the dessert tray with my coffee.”

  “I’ll have the same thing the lady’s having,” Dash said, handing his menu to the waitress. “But the Dungeness crab instead of the salmon.

  “We’ll share,” he told Claren after the waitress had returned to the kitchen with their order.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to. Although I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”

  She looked puzzled about that, as well. “I guess shopping gives me an appetite.”

  “Makes sense to me.” Dash leaned back in his chair and gave her another of those long, probing looks. “Want to talk about it?”

  He saw so much with those fathomless deep eyes. Could he possibly read her mind? Did he realize that in the span of a few short hours, she’d begun to fall in love with him? Lord, Claren considered, the first time in years she finally allowed her emotions free reign, and what did they do but run amok?

  “Talk about what?” she asked cautiously.

  “About why you skipped out on your wedding.”

  “Oh, that.” She waited while their appetizers were served. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into the details right now.” It wasn’t that she was ashamed. Far from it. But she couldn’t help being embarrassed by the way she’d so badly misjudged a man she’d known since adolescence.

  “Sure. There is just one thing I’m curious about.”

  She crossed her legs with a rustle of silk. “Oh? And here I thought you were the man with all the answers.”

  Although he enjoyed the way she had of standing up to him, if he’d been a believer in fate, Dash would have decided that Claren O’Neill Wainwright had been born to complicate his life. Her looks, the way she moved, her scent, the way she had of continually challenging him were driving him to the brink of aggravation. And beyond, dammit, right into obsession.

  “Did you love him?”

  Although she wasn’t familiar with the logistics of romantic triangles, Claren didn’t consider it entirely appropriate to discuss the man she’d been about to marry with the man she was falling in love with. “Who?”

  “Byrd.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?”

  Was she purposefully taunting him? Or was she simply incredibly obtuse? “Do you love the guy now?”

  “No.” She speared a jumbo shrimp. “Not at all.”

  “But you were going to marry him,” he probed.

  “I was going to marry him.” Claren put down her shrimp fork with an air of obvious frustration. “The definitive word is was. Elliott Byrd and I are past tense. Finished. Kaput. Over.”

  The waitress removed the shrimp bowls and replaced them with the chowder.

  “So what changed your mind?”

  Picking up her glass, Claren took a sip of wine. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about Elliott. She wanted to know more about Dash MacKenzie.

  “You never were very specific about what you did for a living,” she said. “Are you sure you’ve never been a policeman?”

  Dash was surprised and annoyed at her sudden change in subject. “No. Why?”

  “I suppose it’s the way you have of looking at me,” she decided. She stirred her chowder, her mind on Dash’s question. “Rather like a G-man giving the mobster the third degree in all those ‘Untouchables’ reruns they show on cable twenty-four hours a day.” When he wasn’t looking at her as if he was about to take her to bed, she tacked on mentally.

  It took an effort, but Dash managed to keep his expression bland and his fingers from tensing on his glass. “Are you a mobster?”

  “No.” She gave him a direct, level look. “Are you a G-man?”

  “No.” It was true. So far as it went.

  “Then what do you do?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know,” she broke in with a frustrated huff. Attempting to learn about this man was like trying to become better acquainted with the Sphinx. “A little of this, a little of that.” The salad was next. Dash wondered where she intended to put it all. If she ate like this on a regular basis, he was surprised she wasn’t the size of the Goodyear blimp.

  “That’s about it,” Dash said agreeably.

  Claren contemplated dumping her salad right into his lap. She tried again. “What are your plans?”

  “Immediate or long-term?”

  Even as he dodged her question, Claren admitted she deserved it. Hadn’t she done the same thing to him? “Immediate.”

  She’d already seen the restlessness in him. A deep-seated restlessness her uncle had shared, in spades. A man like this would never stay in one place very long, Claren warned herself.

  Dash shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “This is a nice part of the country,” he said. “Now that I’ve come all this way, I may as well stick around and do some sight-seeing.”

  If Claren had been disturbed by her feelings for Dash, she was appalled at the relief she felt. “The fishing’s great this time of year. And, of course, some of the best hiking trails in the country are in the Olympic National Forest.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Another thought occurred to her. “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “No. But I saw some motels, along with a couple of bed-and-breakfast places while we were driving through town. I figure I can crash at one of them for a few days.”

  “They’re very nice,” she assured him. “But some of them are rather expensive.”

  He was about to assure her that price wouldn’t be a problem when it occurred to him that she was on the verge of handing him the key to Darcy’s house. So he kept his mouth shut and waited. It didn’t take long.

  Claren had seen the frown shadow his face when she mentioned price. Heaven knows, traveling was always expensive, and from the well-worn appearance of his clothing, she concluded that unlike her uncle Darcy, whose paintings had commanded an astronomical price, Dash was far from a wealthy man. She suddenly realized that she hadn’t bothered to reimburse him for the cost of the plane flight from Jamaica to Seattle. Reaching into the oversize tote she’d hung over the back of
the chair, Claren pulled out her checkbook.

  “MacKenzie,” she murmured, “is that with an M-a-c or an M-c?”

  “M-a-c. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m reimbursing you for your airline ticket.”

  “What?”

  It was obvious that he wasn’t rich. It was even more obvious that he had a right to his pride. Chastising herself for not being more diplomatic, Claren said, “Mr. MacKenzie—Dash—it was very thoughtful of you to come all this way just to bring me Darcy’s photo album. But as you pointed out earlier, I have a very comfortable life. I can certainly afford to pay you back.”

  It was one thing to spy on her. That, Dash had told himself over and over again since leaving Jamaica, was strictly business. But he was damned if he was going to take her money.

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “But—”

  He plucked the checkbook out of her hand and tossed it back into the tote. “I said I can handle the plane fare. Besides, I was getting tired of the islands. This will be a nice change.”

  His words underscored Claren’s feeling that he was not the type of man to settle down. Any woman foolish enough to fall in love with Dash MacKenzie should not expect a happily-ever-after.

  “I had a thought earlier,” Claren said as if she were walking on eggshells. “And if you won’t be offended, I’d like to make you an offer.”

  “What kind of offer?”

  “Well, Darcy isn’t the tidiest person in the world. And he does tend to get distracted planning his treasure hunts.”

  It did not escape Dash’s notice that Claren used the present tense. His first thought was that Darcy’s death still hadn’t completely sunk in. His second, and less palatable thought, was that perhaps she knew something that Dash didn’t. Like the fact that Darcy had faked his death in order to pull off the heist of the decade. That would explain why the divers hadn’t found his body.

  Although he still hated to accept St. John’s theory about Darcy having been part of an international terrorist cell, Dash had to admit that it wasn’t totally inconceivable that the old man may have been tempted by a boatload of smuggled booty.