RUNAWAY (2 page)

It didn’t matter. He’d be dead before he—

Oh, God. There was that word again.
Dead.
Last night the world had turned to fiery hell, and when the flames finally subsided, Jerry Palmer was dead.

Jerry Palmer was dead.

From a dark place deep inside him, something cold welled up to wash over Owen’s body. His stomach pitched and a clammy sweat broke over his flesh as tension tightened again around his chest.

How had this happened? Why had he lived when Jerry was dead? He closed his eyes, trying to get away from the question. Trying to get away, period.

“Ross.” His mother’s voice was distant. “I really think you need to find the doctor. Or maybe we just require some sort of administrator type to get the paperwork going to get Owen home.”

Home. Hell, that’s where he was going, no matter what noises his mother made. His home, here in Paxton, where he could hole up and lick his wounds and lock the door against the world, including his well-meaning but never-understood-him-anyway relatives.

His eyes were still closed when he heard a change in the pitch of his mother’s voice. “Oh, wonderful. Young lady, are you here about my son Owen? I certainly hope so, as we’d like to expedite getting him out of here.”

“Yes, I am here about Owen,” a voice replied.

A voice he knew. A voice he’d been dreaming of since that weekend in Las Vegas.
Her
voice. His heart started pounding again and he felt the bruises riddling his body begin to throb.

She
was
here. Now. Why?

Why now, when it was five weeks ago that she’d stomped off following their argument in Vegas? Why now, when she hadn’t contacted him since? But wasn’t it just like her confounding, inconvenient self to show up today, as he was lying in a hospital bed wearing a ridiculous blue cast and feeling like a 0.5 on a scale of 1 to 10?

And with hair that still smelled of smoke. He lifted his hand to his bristly cheek before he forced himself to lift his eyelids and take in the woman who had the gall to appear so damn beautiful from her place in the doorway.

She was small and sleek, her black hair a shiny wing that curved to her throat. Her eyes were chocolate brown with lashes that were long and curled and that had brushed his throat when they danced—they’d been that close. Her skin was a flawless golden and her full lips the color of a plum. He’d kissed that mouth, nipped it, painted it with his tongue, lost himself in its sweet flavor.

He’d lost his head over those kisses. Over her.

“How are you, Izzy?” he asked, surprised to find that though his voice was roughened by the smoke inhalation, he wasn’t growling like he wanted to.

“Better than you, I see,” she said softly.

Her gaze trained on him, she took a step into the room and he crossed his arms over his chest, the stupid cast clunking against his breastbone. Izzy winced, her downturned mouth sympathetic. “Oh, Owen.”

“‘Oh, Owen,’ what?” Damn, but he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. He wanted her…hell, he didn’t want anything from her except one thing. And she was a flight risk, she’d proven that, so he knew what he had to do now that she’d ventured this close again.

Busted up or not, feeling about as weak as skim milk or not, he must do anything, say anything, agree to anything that would strong-arm her into sticking around long enough to solve the untenable situation they’d put themselves in five weeks before. He couldn’t let her run away again.

It was Caro who reminded them both that there were other people in the room. She bounced up from her chair with a smile and held out her hand. “I’m Owen’s sister, Caro.”

Izzy returned a polite shake. “And I’m…” She glanced over at Owen, obviously asking for help.

He made a little gesture with his hand. “Caro, meet Isabella Cavaletti. Izzy, also meet my brother, Bryce, and my parents, June and Ross.”

Handshakes were exchanged all around and then he gave his family one last piece of info to chew on. Might as well, since he now had this on his plate, too.

“Everybody,” he said to the other Marstons in the room. “Meet my wife.”

Izzy’s plan hadn’t been well formed. If forced to articulate it, she might have mumbled something about wanting a quick peek to reassure herself Owen was okay. As if a 3,000-mile flight for a single quick peek made any kind of sense.

And anyway, that quick peek had turned into a hover-in-the-doorway the instant she’d caught sight of the cast on his arm, the elastic bandages on his ankle, and the other foot in some sort of device that signaled an additional injury. She couldn’t help but take in the dishevelment of his dark blond hair, the scrape high on his cheekbone, and the cut across the bridge of his nose. A man had never looked, she’d decided, so weary and so gorgeous at the same time.

His battered appearance had frozen her in place and then she’d been spotted by a tall, beautiful older woman wearing patrician pearls and a worried expression. Owen’s mother, June Marston.

She’d looked much happier when she thought Izzy was a hospital employee rather than her son’s wife. That apparently put a sour taste in her mouth, because now she was staring at Izzy, her lips pursed and her eyes wide in surprise. “Wife?” she echoed.

Owen seemed unwilling to offer more, so Izzy sucked in a breath and gathered together her charm. By now, it came naturally to her, being friendly with
strangers, getting them to like her and feel comfortable with her right away. She’d developed the skill out of necessity as a child, and the practice now aided her in her career.

“I’m a library consultant,” she told Owen’s family. She tried out an engaging smile, one she hoped would distract them from noticing she wasn’t answering the wife question, even as she stole another look at Owen, trying to better assess his condition. Her hands had gone cold and her stomach ached. Should it hurt so much that
he
was hurt?

“I travel around the country visiting public library systems,” she continued, “to help them modernize their services and increase their ease of use and popularity.”

Owen’s brother had risen to his feet when they’d been introduced and his interest seemed to kindle at the words
modernize
and
increase.
A business type, she guessed, taking in his gray suit and starched white dress shirt. “What kind of suggestions do you generally make?”

“Often I propose redesigning to make the library feel and look more like a big-chain bookstore. Comfortable easy chairs, displays of the current bestsellers, coffee bars. That sort of thing.”

“Coffee bars.” Bryce appeared intrigued. “Really.”

“Ask her about the Dewey decimal system,” Owen put in.

Izzy sent him a surprised glance. Maybe he was better than he appeared. Even one hundred percent
injury-free, she wouldn’t have thought he’d remember that. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together in Las Vegas, and little of it had been focused on their jobs. Instead, their hours had been dedicated to sweet and deep drugging kisses, to memorizing the lines of each other’s bodies with sensuous touches that could turn urgent even when they were only swaying together on a dance floor.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Bryce said, derailing the dangerous train of her thoughts. “What about the Dewey decimal system?”

She slid another look at Owen. “Well…”

“The day I met her, she was coming off a five-day librarians’ convention wearing a round badge that read ‘Dewey’ with a red slash through it.”

Bryce’s face—less rugged than Owen’s, but not less handsome—lit up with his boyish grin. “No Dewey decimal system?”

It was what labeled her a rebel in bibliophile circles. She was a heretic to some for her views on the archaic cataloging system. “I advocate shelving books in ‘neighborhoods’ based on subject matter. It makes more sense to patrons and is easier for them to use.”

Bryce seemed to like the idea. “You must be a very persuasive and busy woman.”

“Busy? Yeah,” Owen confirmed, his voice dry. “So busy it’s been impossible for her to call her—”

“Husband?” June Marston said, blinking as if
coming out of a coma. “Wife? The two of you are really married?”

Owen grimaced, looking to Izzy as if he were regretting spilling the secret. His mother rushed toward his bed, apparently interpreting his expression differently. “Owen, what’s wrong? Are you in more pain? What do you need?”

Owen flicked another glance at Izzy, then directed his gaze back to his mother. “Look, Mom, I’ll explain the married thing later. But right now what I really need is some peace and quiet.” He shifted his shoulders on the pillow as if trying to get more comfortable. “Why don’t you and everyone just go?”

That sounded perfect to Izzy. He could explain the married thing to his family at some later date and she’d come back when he was feeling better and they could be alone to discuss what she’d been avoiding the last five weeks. Maybe by then she’d have found some rational explanation for why she’d been AWOL all that time.

Ready to beat a hasty—if temporary—retreat, she went into an immediate backpedal, deciding she’d locate a nearby hotel. From there, she could call her best friend, Emily, the new librarian in this ‘burg, and talk over the fastest way to fix this sticky predicament with the man she’d married on a whim in Las Vegas. Izzy’s hip bumped into Owen’s sister, Caro, who seemed to be guarding the door.

“‘Everyone’, Owen?” Caro asked.

“Everyone but—” he lifted his uninjured hand to point a forefinger at Izzy “—
you.”

The Marstons were a clan of tall people. Strong. Possibly domineering. Because one minute Izzy was near the door and the next she’d been herded by a slender blond Amazon—aka Caro—to Owen’s bedside. There, he caught her fingers with those of his that stuck out of his bright blue cast. They were long, hard fingers, and as she stared down at the tangle they made with hers, she felt a jolt in her chest. A sting at the corners of her eyes.

Because…it must be because she didn’t like to see him harmed in any way. Not because he was her husband, of course—that wasn’t really real. She didn’t like seeing him hurt because she was a woman and he was a man—no, because she was a
human being
and he was a human being, and that’s the way that good human beings felt toward each other.

His fingers tightened on hers. “You shouldn’t have run out on me,” he murmured. “Why did you?”

Heat rushed up her neck. She
shouldn’t
have run out on him. That’s not the way good human beings treated each other, it was true. She’d known she couldn’t ignore their marriage forever, she’d known she’d been wrong even as she’d used their brief but blistering argument as the impetus to leave him behind in Las Vegas, but could coming back here and doing this face-to-face make it right? “I heard you were calling my name in the ambulance,” she heard
herself whisper, avoiding another awkward question by posing one of her own. “Why did you?”

Before he could answer—would he answer?—Ross Marston stepped up beside her. “Son, before we go we have to get a few details ironed out.”

Owen rubbed his free hand against his whiskered chin. “What details, Dad?”

“I can get your mother to leave quietly now if you’ll agree to come to the penthouse in San Francisco to recover once the hospital releases you.”

His fingers twitched, squeezing Izzy’s and then easing up. “I can’t—”

“You can’t stay at home alone, either,” his mother said, folding her arms over the silk jacket of her expensive-looking pantsuit. “Owen Marston, you’ve always been stubborn, but you’re going to need family around you.”

“Mom—”

“Owen. You can’t take care of yourself, not while you have only one working limb.” She turned to Izzy. “Surely as his…his…good friend, or whatever you are, you can help me convince him that he can’t go home to his condo by himself.”

Looking at the banged-up and bandaged man, it certainly didn’t seem like he should be trying to recuperate without some sort of full-time aid. With both legs like that, and one broken wrist, could he even make his way from the door to his bed? Izzy frowned. “What about Will?” she said, mentioning
the friend who had been with him in Las Vegas the month before.

“He met with some trouble last night, too,” Owen answered.

Her heart caught.
“What?”
Will had been the childhood summer love of her friend Emily, and it was the fault of the other couple, really, that she and Owen had said “I do” under the benevolent gaze of a very bad Elvis. “Is Will injured? Emily didn’t tell me that when she called about you.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to worry you further,” Owen said. “And he’s going to be fine, but I’m not calling him to play nursemaid.”

“That settles it then,” June Marston put in, her voice brisk. “You’re coming home to your father and me.”

Owen’s jaw tightened. “No. Remember, you’re going on that cruise in a couple of days with Caro and her fiance.”

“We’ll cancel. This is more important.” One of his mother’s hands wrapped around the rails surrounding her son’s bed, and the other gripped her husband’s forearm. “A young man lost his life last night. It could have been you.”

This time Izzy’s heart stopped. It was all deathly quiet in her chest as she stared at Owen.
A young man lost his life last night. It could have been you.

Did that really happen? But the truth was there in Owen’s face, in his eyes. Their summer-sky-blue went bleak and she couldn’t believe that the man
she’d laughed with and danced with and impulsively married could look so utterly sad.

His fingers, still entwined with hers, had gone cold. “Owen…” she whispered, as he closed his eyes. She didn’t know if he was still aware she was in the room.

“Maybe I should go,” she murmured as he continued to lie like a corpse—
God—
on the hospital bed.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Go away, Izzy. I’ve got enough to deal with right now.”

It was permission to do what she wanted. A reprieve, from his own mouth, in his own words. But his fingers were still entwined with hers and she stared at them, the sight turning her insides to mush as a sudden decision tumbled out of her mouth. “I’ll take care of him at his place,” she offered, directing her words to Owen’s parents.