That Runaway Summer

by Darlene Gardner

  “The light,” he said. “It’s fading.”

  She drew back from him. Her eyes were glazed but they also contained a healthy dose of mischievousness.

  “Less chance of anyone seeing us if they do come along,” she said.

  He felt his eyebrows rise and his heart lift. “Really?”

  “Did you bring protection?” she asked, erasing any doubt of her meaning.

  “In my wallet,” he said.

  “Then really.” She pulled her shirt over her head, her dark hair tumbling to her bare shoulders. Her breasts were small and perfectly shaped, her nipples already taut. A siren’s smile played about her lips.

  With the water tumbling over the rocks behind her and the setting sun above casting her in a soft light, he thought he’d never seen a lovelier sight.

  He took a mental snapshot, already aware he’d remember this moment forever. Slow and steady was overrated, he thought as he reached for happiness.

  JILL COULD IMAGINE few things more pleasurable than waking up in a luxury hotel room with a stunning view of a Poconos lake and Dan Maguire naked in bed next to her.

  She was snuggled against him, his body warming her. He looked sexy in sleep, the dark sweep of his lashes matching his morning stubble. The white sheet had slipped to his waist, and his bare, hair-sprinkled chest expanded and contracted as he drew in deep, regular breaths.

  Those dark lashes lifted, revealing the clear blue of his irises. His eyes softened and he smiled lazily. “Good morning.”

  She smiled back. “You betcha.”

  They both moved forward, their mouths meeting in a soft, slow kiss without a trace of awkwardness. They’d discovered the previous day and night that their bodies fit together, their rhythms matched and the passion between them was effortless.

  So was the companionship. After the trip to the waterfall, they’d dined by candlelight in the resort’s five-star restaurant and enjoyed a comedy show in the lounge before returning to the room.

  “Mmmm,” she said when they both broke for air, “I sure am glad you didn’t insist on going back to your own room last night.”

  Tendrils of hair had fallen into her face. He smoothed them back with gentle fingers. “Didn’t you beg me not to?”

  “I probably would have gotten around to that,” she said, “if you hadn’t been doing so much begging yourself.”

  He laughed, then rolled over so his weight was on his knees, his body hovering above hers with his hands lightly clamping both of her wrists.

  “Now that I’ve got you at my mercy,” he said, lowering his already deep voice, “you’re the one who needs to do my bidding.”

  She smiled invitingly up at him. “I like the sound of that. What would you like me to do?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Tell me your favorite color.”

  She frowned. “My favorite color? I thought I was going to do your bidding.”

  “Then answer my question.”

  He stared down at her, the expression in his eyes oddly serious. They were such a pretty shade, somewhere between the color of the sky and the water of the Caribbean.

  “Blue,” she said.

  “Favorite food?”

  “Shrimp.” She’d eaten it last night in scampi, a dish that was almost but not quite as good as the company. “Always has been. When I was a little girl, I’d even try to order it at McDonald’s.”

  He grinned. “Favorite book?”

  “The Princess Bride.” She sighed, remembering the tale of high adventure and true love. “It’s my favorite movie, too.”

  “Favorite song?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “Because somehow we got off the subject last night every time the subject was you,” he said.

  She’d deliberately steered the conversation away from herself, but obviously not expertly.

  “So I figured my best chance of getting you to talk about yourself was if I threatened to withhold sex,” he continued.

  She slowly traced the outline of her lips with her tongue and injected a throaty quality into her voice. “Do you really think you’re that strong?”

  He closed his eyes and groaned before saying, “I’m trying to be. Favorite song?”

  She sighed as frustration clawed at her, privately conceding his tactic was working. The sooner she answered his questions, the sooner they could graduate to more agreeable pursuits. “It changes. Right now it’s the one Kenny Grieb sang the other night. ‘Forever and for Always.’”

  “Town where you were born?”

  She started to say Atlanta, then caught herself in time. “Savannah.”

  “I thought you were from South Carolina.”

  Lying naked underneath him, she’d forgotten her cover story. She composed as truthful an answer as she could. “I wasn’t born in South Carolina. I just lived there.”

  “Where in South Carolina?”

  “Columbia.” She and Chris had briefly stayed in the capital city. He waited, obviously expecting her to continue. She remembered stating she and her mother hadn’t stayed in one place for long. She would have crossed her fingers at the lie she was about to tell if he hadn’t been still holding her wrists. “Sumter and Florence. Anderson, too.”

  “Is this so hard?” he asked.

  It was. Excruciatingly so, even if her growing sexual frustration hadn’t been added to the mix. Without Chris’s welfare to consider, she’d tell him the truth immediately and damn the consequences to herself.

  “Hard?” She wriggled beneath him, her eyes skimming down his body to the proof of his arousal. “Does that mean you’re through withholding sex?”

  He managed a low-throated laugh even though his skin was rosy and his eyes slightly unfocused. “Yes.” He dipped his head until his mouth was just inches from hers and whispered, “The rest of my questions can wait.”

  His mouth came down on hers, reigniting the passion that easily flared between them. Sensation swamped her, and she lost herself in him, forgetting all about those questions he still had.

  Until later that afternoon.

  Once they were out of bed, she peppered him with her own questions, even talking during their mountain bike ride. Not only was the cliché true about the best defense being a good offense, she really wanted to know the answers.

  She discovered, among other things, why the dogs he’d kept as pets in the past all had such odd names. Like his current canine duo of Starsky and Hutch, Matlock, Columbo, Crockett, Tubs and Ironside had been named for TV cops.

  “I feel worst for Ironside.” She and Dan had returned the bikes to the resort’s rental shop and walked hand in hand toward the main building. The sun shone overhead, and the lake gently lapped at the shore. “What was wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Why?”

  “Wasn’t he handicapped? That TV Ironside was paralyzed from the waist down, wasn’t he?”

  Dan chuckled. “My Ironside had a silverish marking over his nose and eyes. He could run all day. Didn’t need a wheelchair at all.”

  He held open the door to the side entrance of the hotel, a gentlemanly gesture that made him even more attractive. He was thoughtful, too. He’d requested a late checkout so they could shower and change clothes before returning to Indigo Springs.

  They headed down a wide hallway, off which a ball room and assorted meeting rooms were located, toward the lobby and the elevator that would take them to their rooms. This time she grabbed his hand.

  “By the way, you did fine on the ride.” She’d set a moderate pace that he’d had no trouble matching. “Makes me think you weren’t blowing smoke about being a mountain biker after all.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” He wouldn’t, either. She had no doubt everything he’d told her about himself was the absolute truth. “My sister Erin—she’s the youngest of my sisters, but no less bossy—got me involved. She’s a real jock. You’ll like her.”

  He spoke as if it were inevitable
she and his sister would meet. She dared to hope it was.

  “How about you?” he asked. “How did you get into mountain biking?”

  “My father.” She answered the question without fore-thought, personally raising the subject she was desperate not to discuss. Now that she’d brought up her father, however, she had no choice but to elaborate. “He got me into mountain biking so we’d have something in common. Every weekend he had custody, we’d go for a ride.”

  “Did you love it right away?” he asked.

  “Right away,” she confirmed. “Daddy went out of his way to make things fun for me. He even organized a few father-daughter rides.”

  “Sounds like a great thing to do with your little girl,” Dan remarked.

  “I was a big girl by then,” she said. “The last ride was only about three or four years ago.”

  They’d drawn even with the meeting room where Jill had presented the proposal the day before. She got a mental flash of Sally Tomlin, the resort’s marketing representative, sticking her head around the frame of the door.

  Recognition jolted her, harder this time. Because she remembered where she knew Sally Tomlin from, and it wasn’t the Blue Haven.

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.

  Dan stopped walking. “Something wrong?”

  Her stomach lurched and she felt as if she was going to be sick. The red hair had thrown her because three years ago during that father-daughter bike ride, Sally had been a brunette.

  “Jill.” Dan’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She focused on his face, noting that his forehead was crinkled with concern. Yet how could she tell him about Sally without explaining why remembering where she’d recognized the woman from was a problem?

  She cleared her throat. “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure? You look pale.”

  “I probably just need some water,” she said. “It’s hot outside today.”

  “Then let’s get you some water.” He took her elbow and guided her through the resort to the gift shop in the lobby. He went straight to the cold beverages, opened the refrigerated compartment and handed her a bottle of water.

  She opened the bottle and drank from it as he went to the cash register and paid. Her mind whirred as the cold liquid slid down her throat. She tried—and failed—to remember if Sally had been on more than the single ride, yet she did recall that Sally’s father was an avid member of the Atlanta biking community.

  Yet Sally had seemed satisfied that she recognized Jill from the Blue Haven. If Jill hadn’t been talking about mountain biking as she and Dan passed the meeting room, she wouldn’t have put the puzzle together. Sally might not, either.

  “Thanks for the water,” she told Dan when he rejoined her and they walked together out of the gift shop.

  “Any time.” He placed a hand at her back and lightly steered her toward the elevator, not giving her the option of taking the stairs as she usually did. He pressed the call button, then ran concerned eyes over her.

  “Would you mind taking a shower in the other room so we can get on the road quicker?” she asked. Even though Sally Tomlin wasn’t working the rest of the weekend, Jill was afraid she’d suddenly materialize.

  “Sure,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

  Jill arranged her mouth into a smile. She was over-reacting. Even if Sally remembered how she knew Jill and mentioned their meeting to her father, what were the chances that Sally’s father would contact Jill’s father?

  Slim, Jill thought. Since Jill’s father had married Arianne, he’d largely lost touch with his old life and his old friends.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jill answered, praying she spoke the truth.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHRIS FOLLOWED THE friskier of the two scampering pygmy goats around Dan’s backyard, holding a leather collar and leash behind his back.

  “Here, Bluebell,” the boy cried out in a singsong voice.

  Dan leaned back against a tall oak tree and crossed his feet at the ankles, settling in for a show.

  “Here, girl. Come to Chris.”

  The little goat slowed down marginally. Chris pounced, brandishing the leash and lunging for the animal. Bluebell spurted forward. Chris missed the goat altogether, falling to his knees in the grass. Bluebell ran around the perimeter of the fence, playfully kicking up her hooves.

  Dan hid a smile and called, “I don’t think she’s going to let you catch her.”

  Chris sprang to his feet, looking energized even though he’d been to a sleepover the night before where he said he got only a few hours of shut-eye. The boy didn’t bother to wipe at the dirt and grass on his knees. “Bluebell doesn’t understand I only want to take her for a walk.”

  Dan was about to point out it might be easier to catch Tinkerbell, the goat who had a week to go before its cast could be removed, then thought better of it. Even with the plaster on her leg, Tinkerbell wouldn’t let herself be collared, either.

  Chris chased Bluebell one more time around the yard, lunging and missing yet again. The boy finally trudged over to the back porch, his head bowed so his dark hair hung in his eyes. He set down the leash in defeat.

  Both Bluebell and Tinkerbell came running to him when he walked back into the yard, nudging him playfully, the way they did when they wanted some love.

  “Gol durned! Dag nab it!” Chris cried.

  Dan chuckled, straightening from his position by the tree and joining the boy and the goats in the yard. “Is that what Mrs. Feldman says when she gets upset?”

  Chris scratched Bluebell behind the ear and laughed when Tinkerbell tried to horn in on the action. “No. My dad. Usually at Falcons games.”

  The Falcons were the professional football franchise located in Atlanta. Considering that Chris had spent the first few years of his life in Georgia, it made sense that his father would have been an Atlanta fan.

  “Have you been to any Falcons games?” he asked the boy.

  “Dad takes me all the time.” Chris attempted to keep both of the goats happy, scratching first one, then the other, laughing all the time. “He has season tickets.”

  “That must have been quite a drive,” Dan remarked.

  Chris kept playing with the goats, his attention only half on the conversation. “We don’t drive. We take MARTA.”

  The things Chris was saying weren’t adding up. If the boy had left Georgia as a baby or even a toddler, he wouldn’t remember attending the football games. Dan must have misunderstood how old Chris was when he moved to South Carolina. Or maybe Chris and his father had gone to the games while visiting relatives in Atlanta.

  Even as Dan worked out the logical explanation in his mind, something else didn’t compute. Why had Chris spoken of his deceased father in the present tense?

  “I want to get Dad a Falcons jersey for his birthday,” the boy announced as the goats continued to compete for his favor.

  Dan’s whole body went still. “When’s his birthday?”

  “August thirtieth,” Chris answered absently.

  Bluebell put her two front hooves on Chris’s chest in a desperate ploy for attention. Chris giggled wildly, stepped back so the goat had to put all four legs on the ground, then took off in a run. The goats dashed after him, as though the three of them were playing a game of tag.

  Dan didn’t crack a smile.

  Either Chris had yet to process the fact that his father was dead or the man was alive.

  His heart pounded so hard it felt as if it were trying to escape his chest, yet he told himself not to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Jill wasn’t a liar. She might have asked him not to speak to Chris about his father because she knew her brother was in deep denial. Whatever the reason, he needed to figure out what was going on.

  Jill had tonight off from the Blue Haven and was supposed to call him after she met Penelope Pollock and Sara Brenneman for an early dinner. The light was fading fast, signaling he should walk Chris ho
me. With any luck, he’d arrive at Mrs. Feldman’s house approximately when Jill did.

  His timing turned out to be slightly off. That wasn’t a problem for Mrs. Feldman. She shooed Chris upstairs to take a shower and invited Dan to sample a slice of apple pie while he waited. She insisted on heating the pie in the microwave and adding a dollop of French vanilla ice cream.

  More convinced by the minute that Jill would have a logical explanation, Dan shelved his worries and concentrated on enjoying the dessert.

  “This is the best apple pie I’ve eaten in my entire life,” he exclaimed.

  Mrs. Feldman chuckled with pleasure. “That’s high praise. No wonder Jill is so charmed by you.”

  “Did Jill tell you that?” he asked, another heaping bite of pie balanced on his fork.

  “She didn’t have to tell me anything,” Mrs. Feldman said. “I knew when I looked out the window and saw you kissing her that you curled her toes. Why, you’re the first man she’s given the time of day to since she moved here.”

  Dan set the forkful of pie back down on his plate. “Does she ever talk about her life before she moved here?”

  “Can’t say that she does,” Mrs. Feldman said. “Why do you ask?”

  Because he wanted confirmation that the things Jill had told him were true. A peeling sound pierced the apple-pie-scented air before he could respond. A phone, but not the old-fashioned country phone with the rotary dial suspended from the kitchen wall. This one was a plain black cell phone lying on the kitchen counter.

  “That’s Jill’s phone.” Mrs. Feldman let it ring. “She must have forgotten it.”

  The cell phone stopped ringing. An instant later, the wall phone started.

  “It’s probably the same person.” Mrs. Feldman rose and shuffled over to the phone, lifting the receiver and greeting the caller.

  She listened for a moment, then said, “No. I’m sorry, Chuck. Jill’s cell phone’s here, but she’s not.”

  Chuck was Jill’s boss at the Blue Haven. Dan hoped like hell he wasn’t calling to get Jill to cover for someone at work tonight.

  Mrs. Feldman grew quiet, her entire body freezing. Her right hand gripped the receiver tightly as she concentrated intently on what was being said. Finally she spoke. “That is strange. I’m sure Jill will appreciate you calling to tell her about it.”