RUNAWAY Read Online Free

thanks.”
    “Oops, sorry. It’s not that you’re not incredibly appealing in a chocolate-and-apricot-fairy kind of way—”
    “Chocolate-and-apricot fairy?”

    “Your hair. Your skin.” He gestured to her and grinned. “Obviously, I’m the romantic brother in the family.”
    She’d thought marrying a woman after a three-days’ acquaintance pretty darn romantic. Until she’d woken up the morning after the wedding and thought it was ridiculous and that both of them were certifiable. Owen had accused her of being a coward when he’d caught her checking out of the hotel, and she’d stalked off as if insulted—instead of showing her fear that he’d seen through her like no one else ever had.
    “Why can’t you imagine this might work?” he’d asked. She hadn’t answered him, but she hadn’t stuck around to end the marriage, either. Remembering the moment, her stomach jittered again with another attack of nerves and her gaze slid over to her one piece of luggage, conveniently resting beside the door. Maybe she should renege on her offer after all. Grab her little bag and get the heck out of town, just like she’d done in Las Vegas.
    Leaving Owen behind again.
    But this time hurt and needing…someone.
    But he had family! Friends nearby! Roots in this town and also this nice home to call his own. She had none of those things, and she did just fine. Surely he would be okay—
    “What happened?” she heard herself say, not taking her eyes off her suitcase, as if it were the governor’s pardon that she could pick up if push came toshove. “I don’t really know what happened the night of the fire.”
    She’d been avoiding finding out about it, too. Last evening she’d checked into one of those anonymous business hotels she was so familiar with—the ones that put a USA TODAY outside every door each morning, making it easy for her to avoid Paxton, California’s, local headlines.
    A glance at Bryce had her finding her way to an easy chair on the opposite side of the coffee table. She sank into it, eyeing him as he rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t like to think about it,” he muttered.
    Izzy had spent a lot of time alone as a child. Hence the interest in books. Hence the hyperactive imagination, and she realized that hers was cranking into overdrive without the benefit of facts to rein it in. She glanced with longing at her suitcase and the door just a few steps away. It would be so much easier…
    “He and another guy were on top of a two-story house that was burning,” Bryce said. “They were ventilating the roof. There was a collapse and Owen and the other man fell through—and through again, because fire had been eating at the guts of the place, too. They landed on the ground floor, banging up Owen. A beam also came down and…”
    “And…?” she whispered.
    “And crushed the other guy’s chest. Jerry, his name was. Jerry Palmer.”
    Jerry Palmer. Izzy cursed her imagination, because she could picture a Jerry Palmer, see some man who was no longer in this world. And knowing the name made it so much more real about Owen, too—she could be a widow right now.
    The man she’d married could have died.
    Her gaze jumped to her suitcase again, but she dragged it away to focus on Owen’s brother. “Bryce, I’m going to take care of him,” she vowed. “I’m going to see him back on his feet. I promise.”
    He opened his mouth, but another voice sounded in the room. A little staticky, a lot grouchy. “What? You’re going to leave me alone up here?”
    “Intercom,” Bryce explained, angling his head toward a device on the hallway wall that led to the kitchen.
    “Oh.” She rose at the same time as Bryce and saw him head toward the front door. “Wait. You’re leaving already?”
    “Is anyone there?” the surly voice sounded over the intercom again. “I’m bored. And starting to get cranky.”
    “‘Starting’?” Izzy rolled her eyes and headed for the stairs, but then cast a