A shame, because he was more convinced than ever that the series he imagined would boost his career, along with rehabilitating her image. And, if he was honest with himself, he liked spending time with her. Worse, he liked the tilt of her nose and the slight curves of her breasts as much as he liked her perseverance.
Well, she wasn’t the only one made more tenacious and stubborn by life’s experience. So long as Derek didn’t pull the plug on the whole enterprise, Micah would keep showing up at Ruby’s races with Amir to get footage. Eventually she would say yes. She would cave, if for no other reason than that she would gain enough confidence in her new self that the thought of letting other people tell her story would start to piss her off. Hell, by that point he might have so much footage on her that he wouldn’t need an interview.
He swung himself out of bed and into his chair, respect for her tugging at his conscious. She was trying to redefine herself and her life with notoriety hanging over her head. Whether or not she should have awakened to her new life five or four or three or two years ago was beside the point. Rebirth was a hard and painful process. It didn’t matter if the world was rooting for you or against you, just cracking that old skin and letting the sensitive new bits see the light of day was scary. Many people didn’t even try it until it was too late.
Micah dug a pair of jeans and a Texas A&M T-shirt out of his bag, still mulling over his plans for Ruby while getting dressed. Her worry that the world wouldn’t accept her redemption story was justified. He could cook the story however he wanted, but the viewing public had to be in a mood to swallow rather than spit it out.
He patted the bed for his belt and didn’t feel anything. When he looked up, the silver in his belt buckle glinted at him from the top of his bag, and he weighed vanity against going to get it. Vanity won.
The fact that he’d even forgotten his belt was a sign that Ruby gave him as much to worry about as he gave her. Conflict of interest was spelled out in the lines of her muscles as clearly as his promotion was. He tightened his belt, making sure to note the notch he was using and any pleats or excess in his clothing. The belt was vanity, but it also helped him monitor the condition of his stomach. He’d never have the muscle definition in his abs that he’d had in college, but it was good health practice to make sure he kept up what was physically possible.
If he was smart, he would leave Ruby alone until she came around to his point of view. And he’d keep all their interactions professional from now on. No more intimate dinners in dark hotel rooms with liquor to loosen inhibitions. Only the great outdoors and blinding studio lights.
None of which stopped Micah, before packing his bag, from writing a short note to Ruby to leave at the front desk.
* * *
RUBY HAD PASSED her signed receipt to the desk attendant and was easing her duffel bag onto her shoulder when the clerk said, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and slid an envelope across the desk.
The outside read, “Ruby Heart” in forthright printed letters. She flipped the envelope over and ran her finger under the barely sealed flap. There was a phone number followed by a short message. “Interview or otherwise. Micah.” The handwriting on the note was the same as the envelope. Honest. Blunt. They were qualities she’d never expected to appreciate in a man, but she’d also never expected to look back on a conversation with Micah Blackwell and hope to have another.
She slipped the note into an inside pocket of her purse before she could consider either the interview or the otherwise.
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER, Ruby stood outside the glass doors of the animal shelter and jogged in place to warm up her muscles. In deference to her race over the weekend, she’d made today a short volunteering day. A one-mile loop around a couple blocks times ten dogs would equal ten miles of running. She’d take it easy and slow, making sure her blood flowed through every cell in her body and rinsed out any lingering fatigue. And if a dog wanted to walk, she’d walk.
Three years ago, she’d sought volunteer opportunities because she needed to get out of the house, but every time she left to even take a walk or go to the grocery store, her mother fretted about photographers, running, rumors and scandal. As if they lived in a soap opera. Or like Ruby was Britney Spears.
Haley was the one who’d suggested the shelter. “They always need people to walk the dogs, and your parents aren’t heartless enough to complain that you’re volunteering at an animal shelter.” Her cousin had been right about the first and mostly right about the second. Ruby’s mother had obviously considered complaining and her father had made a snide comment about people who don’t take care of their responsibilities, but her brother, Josh, had countered by pointing out how good it would look if the press found out.
After about a month of walking dogs every day, Ruby had suggested that she take some of the more hyperactive dogs running. Ruby and the dogs had gone through an adjustment period where, with the help of one of the volunteer trainers, Ruby had learned how to be the alpha dog and the dogs had learned how to run with a partner. The idea had been a win for everyone involved. Ruby got out of the house and back into running on a regular basis. The shelter had upped their adoption rate of the bigger dogs, for whom better exercise meant they were less anxious around potential owners.
And Ruby had watched the shelter employees care for and be gentle with dogs too sick, too aggressive or too old to be easily adopted. The employees and volunteers might have become desensitized to the fate of many of the dogs and cats brought in, but their hearts hadn’t callused over. And so Ruby learned both what it meant for the careless to neglect their responsibilities and for the caring to do the hard thing because it was the right thing. More than Micah’s condemnation of her, the articles in the press and the lawsuits, volunteering at the shelter had taught her the cost of shortcuts in each and every frightened pair of eyes that peered through the cages at her as she walked past them.
Ruby reached down to touch her toes. A pair of boots and white dog feet appeared in her sight line. She looked up. Jodie, the volunteer coordinator, stood holding on to a leash attached to a Dalmatian. Even though the Dalmatian was sitting, the dog’s nervous energy was evident in the way it shook and how its eyes darted about. The dog looked young, scared and ready to bolt.
“This is Dotty,” Jodie said. “Dotty has just been surrendered to us. She’s a year old and needs to be worn-out. If you can stay an extra hour or so, we would appreciate it if you could run her five miles before the other dogs and five miles after.”
Which would make today’s run twenty miles. She could run twenty miles, but she’d be pushing the boundaries of her recovery. She did a quick readjustment of her training schedule. If she did twenty slow miles today, she could run five tomorrow and five the day after. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but Dotty’s deep black eyes never once came to rest for longer than a second and Ruby could see that she needed this.
“Sure you want me to take her that far?” One of the original concerns the shelter employees had about Ruby running the dogs had been that they weren’t used to it, and they feared that long runs would cause injury. One mile seemed enough for most of the dogs, and the ones who needed more were just in the rotation more regularly.
Jodie looked down at the shivering dog. “Isn’t she pretty?” she cooed. Dotty licked her lips and Jodie raised her gaze back to Ruby. “Dalmatians are the original coaching dogs. They have been bred to run for miles alongside a horse. People get them because they’re attractive animals. But they don’t take them for long-enough walks during the day and then blame the beast when their couch gets destroyed. We’re hoping to place Dotty with one of the Dalmatian rescues but, until then, she needs exercise.”
“Oh.” Ruby looked Dotty over. The dog trembled.
“Dalmatians are willful, so be firm with her.” The dog pulled a little on her leash and Jodie tsked at her. “At least her owners had
the decency to take her to obedience school, so she knows her commands. Don’t let her fool you into thinking otherwise.” Ruby thought she heard Jodie muttering about people who don’t do their research, but whatever the volunteer coordinator was saying, she was saying it under her breath.
“Dotty,” Ruby called hopefully. The dog looked at her. She looked at the dog. “Are you ready to go running?” Dotty quivered. The amount of a sway in the leash from the dog’s shivers made Ruby wonder if her arm would be exhausted holding on to the thing. No matter. The dog needed something—probably not to feel abandoned.
Ruby took the leash from Jodie and, at Jodie’s suggestions, went through a couple commands with the dog. Then she double-checked her hip for her cell phone in case of trouble and they were off.
“Don’t let her run in front of you,” Jodie called after them. “She needs to heel or run behind.”
“Hear that, Dotty,” Ruby said to the dog trotting next to her and beginning to get a couple toes out in front. “Heel.” When Dotty didn’t back down, Ruby repeated herself in a firmer tone. The dog slowed enough so that her toenails were level with Ruby’s heels. And they settled into a rhythm.
Ruby’s mind went to the blissful no-man’s-land where only the softs sounds of her feet hitting the ground and movements of her legs were allowed to join her. Until they ran past a couple kids tossing a football in their yard and Micah’s smiling face popped into Ruby’s head. She stumbled, jerking Dotty forward with her, and the dog made a quiet yelp of surprise. Even once they got their tempo back, what she’d hoped to avoid by running with the dogs had already happened. Micah had forced his way into her thoughts, and he was as hard to get out of her mind as he had been to get out of her hotel room.
The kids had an amazing amount of stamina. Ruby had finished her five miles with Dotty and was on her third dog when they’d finally gone inside and she could pass by the house without Micah’s voice in her head. Do you need my forgiveness to move on with your life?
People said running was perfect for meditation, turning off your brain and focusing on the cadence of your steps instead of your thoughts. Ruby had always been faster than everyone at school, but she’d gotten much faster once puberty started and she’d tried to outrun her anxieties. One advantage of training had been that she could focus her thoughts on her form. But the person who cared about form, nutrition and training schedules had also been willing to cheat to win. In the years between her cheating and her decision to run an ultramarathon, Ruby had limited her thoughts to basic meditation and forced away any cares of form.
At least Micah was a pleasant change of pace, especially the Micah who had brought her dinner and talked with her long into the night, and whose self-assurance made her feel as though everything was going to turn out for the best. That Micah seemed to believe she had a future. She wanted to believe she did.
The handoff back to Dotty was a relief, because she was beginning to combine Micah and the idea of a future into a future with Micah and that thought was a fool’s errand. Despite his broad shoulders and confident smile, he was no one she could trust. Hell, he’d admitted it himself. Any future she imagined that included taking her clothes off in front of him also included sharing more intimacies with him, and she didn’t believe Micah would be above using those intimacies against her to further his career.
She’d be angry if he did, but she wouldn’t blame him. If she forgot he had a career and indulged in foolish little-girl fantasies it was her fault, not his. The break in her rhythm allowed her to talk herself down from a future with Micah to seeing Micah in the future. Where she would be reminded to be on her guard against him and against fantasies that could never become reality.
Dotty slowed down enough to dart behind Ruby so that she was running next to the road. Ruby made a big circle above her head with her right arm to sort the dog, her arms and the leash. Once she and Dotty were back on track, Ruby noticed a dark blue SUV slow down beside her. Dotty’s hackles went up in a line of black-and-white on her neck and back.
Ruby looked around her, her heart pounding and her breath short from more than the running. She’d run this same loop five to thirty times a day, five days a week, for three years. Since the industrial buildings and strip malls hadn’t changed, she’d stopped paying attention to them, only noticing the activity at the few houses along the route. Few cars traveled these roads and, to her folly, she’d been focused solely on her running and the dog linked to her arm.
Her already fatigued muscles tightened, and she gripped the end of Dotty’s leash. Foreboding crushed her lungs, which hurt her speeding heartbeat. Blood pounded in her ears and she had to take a deep breath not to get caught up in her fear. She was Ruby Heart. No one trapped Ruby Heart.
The passenger-side window eased down. Ruby whipped her head to the left and the right. Between two of the buildings to her left was a passageway that looked big enough for her and Dotty, but not big enough for the car. She could speed up, hope the car continued to try to keep pace with her, then stop suddenly, dart behind the car and through the passageway. If she was lucky, there was an exit on the backside. Or at least a place to hide while she called the shelter for help.
“Ruby Heart?” The voice coming from inside the SUV was familiar, but Ruby couldn’t get a good angle that let her see the face of the driver. “I’ll be damned. That’s really you.”
The alarm bells that had quieted rang again when Dotty growled. Ruby had never felt so trapped while running. She could see all sorts of places to escape if it were only her, but she couldn’t clamber over a fence with a dog. She tried to ignore the man and the car, picking up her pace a little and hoping she would at least make it to the slightly busier road ahead.
“Micah is a cagey son of a bitch.”
Hearing Micah’s name uttered by the mysterious man was so astonishing that she stopped short, surprising Dotty, who had run ahead. The dog yelped when the leash snapped back. Dotty looked around, then ambled back to Ruby’s side when she muttered, “Heel, Dotty, heel.”
“He was going to keep the story of the year away from King, and Dexter was going to let him,” the voice continued after the car had stopped and backed up. The voice tsked.
Her shoulders eased away from her ears now that she was able to place both the man’s voice and the obnoxious reference to himself in the third person. Micah may have ambushed her in her hotel room, but at least he’d had the decency not to pretend to be a royal we. “King Ripley, how did you find me here?”
“I called your house, of course.”
What had her mother gotten in return for passing on Ruby’s side job to the press? A false guarantee of favorable coverage? Tickets to the U.S. Open? Or was King’s presence only punishment for Ruby’s secrets? If it had been her father who’d sold her down the river, at least she’d know that King was a reminder of whose opinions counted. But her father was so rarely home these days, and she couldn’t remember the last time he’d answered a ringing phone. Whatever her mother’s reasons, Ruby wished she could see King’s face and the inside of the car, but the tinted windows and the shadows meant she only saw flashes of teeth and skin.
Micah may have used his cameraman to seek her out, but he’d approached her face-to-face and been up-front with his intentions. She lifted up onto the balls of her feet and began running again. She went slowly, keeping Dotty tight at her side. “I’m busy right now. Perhaps you could call me later.”
“I wanted to see if it was really you.”
As if she was some kind of circus freak?
“But since we’re talking, I want you to know that I’d be a better choice for an interview than Micah. Just think on it.” And with a wave of his hand, a brief flash of skin and the glint off a large ring, he sped off.
Ruby and Dotty were again alone on the road.
“I’d be less likely to say something incriminating if I let Kin
g interview me,” she said to the dog, who looked up at her and woofed. “But that oaf provides no challenge.”
She and Dotty made their way back to the shelter. Once there, Ruby grabbed her purse from one of the offices. Micah’s note was still in the same pocket she’d slipped the paper into before leaving the hotel. She could hear the paper crinkle every time she dug for her keys. She should throw it out.
She had the note memorized anyway.
CHAPTER NINE
AFTER SHE GOT home and showered, Ruby went down the stairs to confront her traitorous parent. She found her mother in the living room, trimming dead leaves off the houseplants and singing softly to them.
“Mom, did you tell a reporter where I volunteered?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, dear. He was so nice when we spoke on the phone and you looked so irritated about me interfering with Mike’s phone call the last time, not getting the reporter’s information and all.” Her mother’s voice poured out soothing innocence, which floated over the hardwood floors before getting lost in the pallor of the wool rugs.
Ruby preferred Micah’s flat judgment. At least that was honest. “And?”
“And your father and I decided that if you wanted to be running again—”
Did they know about her two races? If they knew, would they disapprove of her new hobby enough to give out information to every caller in a ploy to force Ruby back into their fold? She shuddered at the idea, but before she accused her mother of something nefarious, reason wrenched back its control over her thoughts. If they knew she was racing again, both her parents would have expressed the full force of their opinions. They would manipulate and maneuver, but she didn’t believe they’d do anything to place her in actual harm’s way.
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