Love on the Run (Pine Harbour Book 5)
Page 1
Love on the Run
Zoe York
www.zoeyork.com
Contents
Also by Zoe York
Welcome to Pine Harbour
About This Book
Playlist
Liana Hansen 2016 Summer Tour Dates
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Also by Zoe York
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* * *
PINE HARBOUR
Love in a Small Town
Love in a Snow Storm
Love on a Spring Morning
Love on a Summer Night
Love on the Run
Love in a Sandstorm
* * *
THE WARDHAM SERIES
Between Then and Now
What Once Was Perfect
Where Their Hearts Collide
When They Weren’t Looking
Beyond Love and Hate
Perfect No Matter What
No Time Like Forever
Beneath These Bright Stars
Forever Begins with a Kiss
* * *
THE SEALS UNDONE SERIES
* * *
ASSIGNMENT: CARIBBEAN NIGHTS
* * *
And I also write as Ainsley Booth (Prime Minister)
Welcome to Pine Harbour
Tucked into a hollow half-way up the Bruce Peninsula, on the eastern shores of Lake Huron, Pine Harbour is where cottage country meets northern living. For generations, the Foster family has been a rock in the community. All the Foster men serve in the local Army reserve unit and the youngest adult generation is no exception.
* * *
Meet the Foster boys: Dean, Jake, Matt and Sean. A cop, a contractor, a paramedic and an adventure racer. All soldiers. None of them looking for love, but it’s coming!
* * *
Their best friends are the Minellis: Zander, Rafe, Tom and Dani. A full-time soldier, a cop, a park ranger and a paramedic. Dani’s the only girl in the entire bunch and she’s not sure how she feels about that. When Rafe got married, she was thrilled to have a sister–and even though he and Olivia have split up, Dani’s not giving up that bond. (And neither is Rafe, for that matter).
* * *
The Books of Pine Harbour
* * *
Love in a Small Town
Rafe and Olivia
Six years. Two break-ups. One divorce. They should be over each other…
* * *
Love in a Snow Storm
Jake and Dani
Never fall in love with your best friend’s little sister…
* * *
Love on a Spring Morning*
Ryan and Holly
Duplicity. Desire. Denial. They were doomed from the start.
* * *
* Ryan Howard’s brother, Finn, lives in a town a few hours south of Pine Harbour. If you like this series, you’ll probably love Wardham, too! Finn’s book is #4 in that series, Beyond Love and Hate.
* * *
Love on a Summer Night
Zander and Faith
Sometimes saying goodbye is just the beginning.
* * *
Love on the Run
Dean and Liana
Nobody said love was convenient.
About This Book
Bodyguard. [Noun]
A person hired to escort and protect another person. Escort and protect. Definitely no flirting, kissing, or testing the bounds of third base.
* * *
Dean Foster has nearly two decades experience being calm, cool, and collected. His first gig in his new private security contractor role should be more of the same, but Nashville superstar Liana Hansen blows all that out of the water in one breathy hello.
* * *
Liana isn’t sure how she feels about the straight-laced cop shadowing her everywhere she goes, but there’s no denying the chemistry between them. Too bad he insists on keeping his clothes on. And then there’s the pesky matter of feelings. Neither of them likes those.
* * *
With only a dozen stops left on the tour, one of them is going to have to bend. Or the other is going to wind up breaking something.
Playlist
All of these songs are available at your favourite retailers
* * *
Unlove You - Jennifer Nettles
We Can’t Be Friends - Joanna Smith
Enough - Reba McEntire (featuring Jennifer Nettles)
Crash and Burn - Thomas Rhett
A Woman Like You - Lee Brice
Good News, Bad News - George Strait and Lee Ann Womack
Girl Next Door - Brandy Clark
Grandma’s Garden - Zac Brown
Riser - Dierks Bentley
Faded Gloryville - Lindi Ortega
Outside Your Door - Dolly Parton
Marry Me - Martina McBride
Liana Hansen 2016 Summer Tour Dates
Savannah - June 27
Washington - July 4
Raleigh - July 5
Charlotte - July 6
Knoxville - July 7
Louisville - July 8
St. Louis - July 9
Memphis - July 10, 11
Tulsa - July 16
Denver - July 18
Bozeman - July 19
Mountain Home - July 20
Salt Lake City - July 22
Portland - July 25
Humbolt County - July 27
Los Angeles - July 30, 31
Los Vegas - August 2
Phoenix - August 3
San Diego - August 5
Dedication
to flying high and being free
* * *
For everyone who has chased their dreams, and discovered themselves in the process
Chapter One
HIDING from her problems wasn’t a great plan.
Not a long-term one, anyway. In the short term, Liana Hansen had a pitcher of fruit tea and a shady tree under which she could read. Or at the very least, hold a book and stare into the distance without worrying that someone might notice and ask her what was wrong. For the first time in two days, there was no hovering best friend doing her darnedest not to ask why Liana had shown up in Pine Harbour.
She was finally alone.
Still numb, still confused. Solitude wasn’t an easy fix, either.
Deep down, a voice whispered that she could try talking about it. But she wasn’t ready to confide to anyone that for the first time in her adult life, she’d given her career the proverbial middle finger.
Not even to Hope, who would understand completely.
She didn’t want to voice any of it out loud, because she didn’t feel good about what she’d done. But she couldn’t let that gross worry in the pit of her stomach take over. When your career was all you had, and the livelihood of others rode on your reckless, spur-of-the-moment decision to run away, she imagined nau
sea and regret were pretty par-for-the-course side effects.
And bigger than those feelings was the intense, unexpected relief at having escaped.
It couldn’t last.
She knew that.
But it felt weirdly, dizzyingly right at the moment, even if it created a host of messy complications.
She’d arrived at Hope’s house mid-morning two days earlier, dropped off by an airport limo driver who’d appreciated that she’d doubled his fee. And she’d in turn appreciated that he treated her as a totally anonymous customer.
Didn’t mean that she wouldn’t get outed at some point. There was no such thing as guaranteed privacy, not when the tabloids would pay top dollar for any embarrassing anecdote or photo or, better yet, both. Not that coming up to Pine Harbour wasn’t a dirty secret—as long as nobody knew why.
Nothing wrong with a celebrity gallivanting off to cottage country, right? It kind of worked for her image most of the time. People loved it when she shared pictures with her bestie. She hadn’t done that yet this trip, though, and wouldn’t until it became necessary. Until she knew what her next step was and she needed to set that stage.
And since Hope and her family were out shopping right now, she didn’t need to think about that for at least another hour or two. Tomorrow was a national holiday in Canada, so they’d all gone shopping since the stores would be closed the next day. Pine Harbour and the Bruce Peninsula were a lot like Nashville in that a celebrity—even a movie star like Hope Creswell—could hit the supermarket to stock up for a long weekend grill out and nobody looked twice.
She’d bowed out of going with them, as she always did. She wasn’t in a hurry to be found out just yet, and had no desire to tempt fate. As far as her fans knew, she was on tour. Nobody knew that she’d had an anxiety attack in Savannah, and instead of heading home to Nashville for a few days before their next gig, she’d taken the last flight to Toronto.
She’d come to her safe space. Hope’s house, in the middle of Canadian nowhere-ville, surrounded by pine trees and a glittering blue lake.
She glanced at her cell phone.
Thirty unread messages glared back at her.
Her tour manager and her agent hadn’t accepted her weak-ass story. She winced. She owed them more details, but right now, she didn’t have anything reassuring to tell them.
What she needed was a sign from the universe. Something that would bolster her up, renew her ability to be The Liana Hansen when deep inside she felt like she’d been stripped back to little Leigh Anne Hansen, eighteen years old and willing to do anything to get heard by the right person.
What had the last eleven years done for her?
So much. Everything, really.
So why wasn’t she more grateful for what she had?
Why did she want to cry when she thought of stepping on to that stage in Washington?
From the front of the house, tires crunched on gravel, a sharp, unexpected popping sound that made her heart race. It hadn’t been that long since Hope and her family had left, and they’d planned to drive down the peninsula to the larger city at the base of the bay.
She swung her legs down from the lounge chair, but before she could stand up and slide into the house like a ghost, a tall man in a dark blue uniform, big and broad and serious looking, strolled around the corner of the house.
For a second, panic seized her chest. Why was a cop here?
He stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the deck and gave her a nod as he looked at her, then past her, clearly checking out the property. He rolled his shoulders, which only dragged her attention to his solid, heavy arms, which matched the rest of him. Definitely tall. Definitely big. And definitely serious. “Good afternoon.”
“Hello.” Lord, she sounded like a breathy pin-up caricature of herself. Why was that her default response? Charm was only her defence mechanism. She was a one-trick pony.
He swivelled his attention back to her, a frown pulling between his clear, dark-grey eyes as he cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Ryan.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs in relief. “Oh.” She straightened up. He was a friend of Ryan’s. He wasn’t there to arrest her for hiding. Of course not. Hiding wasn’t a crime, not even in Canada. She tossed her hair and gave him a smile. So what if it was practiced? Nobody noticed the difference anyway.
A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth and he looked at her again, more closely this time.
She looked right back at him. At those eyes, and the fall of light brown hair above them, a little long in the front, but regulation short on the sides. At his square jaw and long, muscled limbs. He was built, a very distracting combination of strength and leanness through the middle that made her wonder if he had six-pack abs or just one long, hard flex of muscle there. No ogling, she tried to tell herself, as she dragged her attention back to his face, and back up to that very distracting lock of hair teasing his forehead. She couldn’t tell if the lighter strands in his hair were blond or grey, and it didn’t matter.
Big, serious, and hot.
She felt her smile widening on its own. Not being arrested made her a wee bit more generous with information. “They’re all out. Shopping for the party tomorrow.”
“Ah.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of his uniform highlighting the flex of his thick, corded forearms. “Shouldn’t have assumed. I’ll give him a call.”
Was he looking for an invitation to stay?
Sexy arms aside, she hadn’t been looking for company for the afternoon. Even if those arms were attached to movie star good looks she couldn’t ignore now that her flight or fight response had faded.
Okay, maybe some company wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“I’m Dean, by the way.” He uncrossed his arms, as if he was thinking about offering his hand to shake but then thought better of it. He propped his hands on his lean hips, right next to a gun on one side and what she imagined were handcuffs on the other.
Hello, Dean.
* * *
— —
* * *
It had taken him a minute to place the woman standing in front of him, because he’d never seen her in person, and the country music star was always made up in photographs.
But it was an open secret in Pine Harbour that Hope’s best friend visited from time to time, and always kept to herself.
Now he understood why. Liana Hansen was drop-dead gorgeous. The kind of pretty that scrambled brain cells and made grown men stupid. Maybe even more so right now, without any makeup or fancy outfits.
He couldn’t stop looking at her, cataloguing the very real, very sexy woman in front of him. Her dark, wavy hair was tousled and shoved haphazardly over one delicate shoulder. Her grey t-shirt and black yoga pants were as ordinary as could be. But the grey also made her clear blue eyes pop out of her face, and the pants seemed to highlight tight, compact curves that went on for miles.
And when she’d said hello in that breathy way, her eyes big and her voice husky, turning up at the end, his body had reacted in a completely unprofessional way. Now he jerked his gaze back to her face, only to have his eyes trip over her bare pink lips, full and lush as she parted them.
Finally he remembered the flash of alarm she’d given him when he walked around the corner. Shit. “Is something the matter? Because—”
“Everything’s fine.” She smiled as she cut him off, but it was locked down and controlled. Didn’t go anywhere near her eyes.
He lifted his hands into the air in a universal easy there signal. “As I said, I just popped in to catch up with Ryan. But if you wanted me to take a look around the property for some reason…”
She blinked at him, then groaned and shook her head. “No. Oh, God no. I’m just…” She winced and her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Lush.
Inappropriate, he told himself.
But it wasn’t every day he stumbled across a woman like this.
Of course his sub-c
onscious had a retort for that, too. High-maintenance, high-profile, high-drama.
And when Liana let out another breathy sigh and finished that thought, she reinforced all of that. “I’m on a little break from reality, okay? And I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, so you caught me off guard is all.”
A little break from reality? Must be nice.
She gave him another one of those not-quite-to-the-eyes smiles and glided closer. “Of course, now that you’re here…”
Whoa. Dean wasn’t sure which he was more surprised by—the one-eighty spin on her personality or his body’s willingness to take her up on the blatant offer. Because as her purred words dropped off into a pregnant pause, his gut tightened and his thighs clenched, like a thoroughbred chomping at the bit.
Hell yes. Except his brain caught up, a second behind but always in control.
He could add complicated little games-player to the list of reasons why he shouldn’t, couldn’t find the woman in front of him captivating. But actually slamming that cell door shut on his libido was easier said than done, because even as his mind struggled with how to phrase the rejection—politely, of course, because she was a guest in his community and he was wearing the uniform, and she was also just a human being deserving basic courtesy—
“Cat got your tongue?” She laughed, a little too brightly.
“Uh…” Yes, obviously. He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I’m on duty.”