My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) Read Online Free

watched her walk away and felt the knot tighten in his throat. She was laughing back at Eddie. Her legs were as long as a dancer’s, her hair a shower of curls that caught the light and turned it into sparkling stars.
    He assumed she was preparing to jump again, and he wanted to go back to her, to stop her. She was always poking at fate with a sharp stick. One of these days, fate was going to strike back. Why couldn’t he protect her from that? If he could only take her in his arms and hold her ...
    He smiled ruefully, his gaze still following her progress. He’d never been able to catch her. She was always dancing just out of reach. Trying to take her in his hand would be like trying to catch a sunbeam.
    She disappeared into a building, and he slumped down against the car, impressed with his own analogy. That’s just what she’s like , he thought. A sunbeam. You could bask in her warmth when you were lucky enough to find it, but there was no way to capture her, to hold her down. And any other light seemed strained and artificial. Until he’d seen her, mud-spattered and beautiful, he’d forgotten how important she had been in his life.
    “Reid, are you coming or not?”
    He looked up, startled. He’d forgotten the others. They were waiting, already seated in the car.
    “Yes, I’m coming,” he said, slowly straighteningand pulling away from where he’d been leaning. Despite the aching longing seeing her had set up in his chest, hewasn’t going to stay to watch her challenge the skyagain.

    Jennifer came out of the building, glanced toward the road, and noted the sleek silver Mercedes gliding out of the parking lot and heading for the highway. “ Now that I know where to find you, I’ll be back, ” he’d said.  
    “Oh, God,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a second, “I hope he didn’t mean it.”

CHAPTER TWO:  
    Picnic in the Park  

    Jennifer was almost able to lull herself into believing his words had been a bluff. As the days went by, the chances that he meant what he’d said seemed to grow smaller. After all, Destiny Bay wasn’t all that far from where she lived in Los Angeles. A two hour drive and he’d almost be there. If he’d really meant to come, he’d have done it by now.
    So she tried to tell herself as she went about her daily business. She’d gone to work on Monday expecting to see him around every corner, but when Friday rolled around and he still hadn’t made an appearance, she began to relax.
    After all, knowing she was in the LA area wasn’t the same as knowing where she lived.   He probably still couldn’t find her.  
    Working helped. She wondered if he realized she had a job. He seemed to have some idea that she spent all her time playing. She did her share, but work was just as important to her.
    Work meant The Magnificent Munch, a gourmet food shop she’d started three years before with Eddie and another friend, Martha Barnes. They’d all been working at Sheffield Gourmet, a ritzy place on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, when they’d had the idea of a gourmet shop for regular people.
    “We won’t tack on the markup that most of these places charge,” she’d argued successfully to Eddie and Martha. “We won’t make as much profit, but we’ll have a lot of fun.”
    They’d found a little hole-in-the-wall on Melrose just at the start of the New Wave clothing boom, and before they knew what was happening, they were part of what was “in” with the young people of the area. Even without the huge markup, they were doing very well. They specialized in providing interesting, unusual foods with knowledgeable service at a bargain-basement price.
    They worked long hours to do it. Jennifer was in charge on Friday. At opening time she was hurrying from station to station, making sure every section of her store, from the bakery, with its oven right in the middle of the floor so that customers could see their goods being baked, to the wine rack with its special supply