RUNAWAY (3 page)

Something about the man made her impetuous, and she’d yet to understand why or get control of it. “That’s what he wants,” she heard herself continue, “and if that’s what he wants, he’ll be more comfortable there and also recuperate faster.”

Instead of looking at her, June and Ross Marston were gazing on Owen. So she looked at him, too. His eyes were open again and he was staring at her. She didn’t have a clue as to what he was thinking. Though…was that a gleam of calculation in his eyes?

“What the hell are you saying, Izzy?” he asked.

She smiled, her extra-special charming one, because she figured she was going to need to be extra-
special charming if she was going to help this man get back on his feet. The way she figured, her subconscious had come up with the idea as a way to atone for the sin of being such a craven coward five weeks before.

“I can rearrange my schedule to free up a few weeks. So I’m saying—” she told him, clasping his fingers in what she hoped was a reassuring grip “—I’m saying, ‘Honey, I’m home,’ for as long as you need me.”

Chapter Two

N
ice digs,
Izzy thought, as she toured the middle level of Owen’s condo while his brother settled him into the master bedroom upstairs. The bottom floor was a spacious garage. They’d parked Owen’s SUV inside, but he hadn’t allowed her to help maneuver him from the backseat where he’d been stretched out.

“Bryce can get me upstairs,” he’d muttered, giving her a brief, hard look when she started to protest.

So he wasn’t grateful to her, she acknowledged as she heard deep-voiced curses drift down the stairs. Or all that comfortable, either—with the pain from his injuries or her presence or perhaps both. But for her part, she thought she could be easy within the
confines of his condo. There was a bedroom near his upstairs that he’d said she could use. She was used to making herself at home in strange hotel rooms, and Owen’s abode—with its walls in contrasting shades of blue hung with groupings of framed, brightly colored primitive paintings—was several notches above any place she usually laid her head.

She ran her fingertips along the top of a manly yet soft-looking couch that had plump cushions and was set in front of an old trunk to serve as a coffee table. In the last five weeks when she’d thought of Owen, she’d never considered where and how he lived. Those few days they’d been together had been like a bubble in time. In her mind, after she’d left he’d still been in Las Vegas, standing in some casino somewhere like a slot machine with a better physique and all the flashy lights and tempting bells and whistles.

She crossed to a massive shelving unit built to surround a large-screen TV and that held DVDs, books and an interesting collection of firefighting memorabilia. Her finger slid along the rim of an old fireman’s helmet.

“Where’s the rest of your luggage?”

At the voice, she jumped and spun around, for a minute confusing the man coming into the room with the man she’d married. Their height was the same, and they had that same dark blond hair and square chin. But it was Bryce, not Owen, and she felt her tight stomach ease a little. She owed the man upstairs,
and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from offering to help him, but the idea of actually living with Owen did make her a bit nervous.

I can do this, though. I can dispense with the guilt I feel for running out on him by doing a good turn for the guy.
She thought of the bandages, the cast, the cuts and bruises.
He needs me.

“Where’s the rest of your luggage?” Bryce asked again.

“I just have the one bag,” she said, pointing to the small suitcase she’d set by the door. “I travel light.”

Bryce’s eyebrows rose. “I guess. I thought that was your makeup case.”

Izzy shook her head. “I’m short. My feet are small. My clothes and shoes don’t take up all that much room.”

He was still looking at her one bag. “My brother, the lucky dog, marrying the only woman on planet Earth who can make do with less.”

Make do with less? Izzy frowned. That wasn’t how she saw herself. She was efficient. And capable of moving on in a moment—before she ever outstayed her welcome.

“So…you really are married to him?” Bryce asked.

“Well…” She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“I don’t need to be anywhere anytime soon.” He crossed to the couch and sprawled onto the cushions.

“At the moment, I’d rather talk about Owen. How’s he doing?” Izzy glanced up at the ceiling.

“Down for the count for a while, I’d guess. The
meds and the trip home have done him in.” He forked a hand through his hair. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should stay….”

“I thought you have a job more than an hour away in San Francisco.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. The family biz. Granddad can’t do it all by himself, though he wants to, and he and my dad are like oil and water. It’s too far a commute, and in any case I would have trouble putting in my usual fourteen-hour days while taking care of Owen, too.”

“But you see, I do have time.” Then there was something else to consider—that chilling glimpse of Owen’s desolate eyes that had scared her into volunteering for the gig as his personal home health aide. She was rebellious, yet not usually reckless, so it was still a surprise.

“And he seems willing to let you spend that time with him.”

She held back a snort. “Only because it seemed the easiest way to put off your mother, I suspect.”

Bryce laughed. “Yeah, I thought the same. She’s a nice woman, really, but the prospect of having our mom hover could make a man desperate to settle for anyone else.”

“Gee, 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 to
shove. “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, be
cause 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 last glance at Bryce, who already had his hand on the doorknob. “Words of wisdom, at least?”

“Just two.” He gave her a bracing smile. “Good luck.”

Owen breathed out a silent curse as the woman entered his bedroom, a tray in her hands. What had
he been thinking to allow Isabella Cavaletti to play nurse to his patient? In a pair of jeans that clung to her petite but curvy frame, a V-necked T-shirt just hinting at those small breasts that had snuggled against his chest on the dance floor in Vegas, clearly she was going to cause new symptoms instead of helping to heal current injuries.

Just a breath of her fresh, sweet perfume and he was dizzy.

“Are you all right?” she asked, hurrying over to place the tray on his bedside table.

“I’m terrific,” he said. No way was he going to let her know that her proximity made him woozy. He’d already spent way too much time at her mercy. Scowling, he admonished himself to hold tight to his righteous anger at her. “Five damn weeks, Izzy.”

Hell. Had he said that out loud? It was all well and good to tell himself he was going to stay tough guy, but with those stupid meds in his system he was not in full control of himself. Five weeks. He hadn’t meant to let her know he cared that much to keep count.

But for God’s sake! Five damn weeks and not once had he heard from his wife.

She looked down, guilt stamped all over her face, so yeah, he’d definitely spoken his thoughts aloud. “I know how long it’s been,” she said, studying the carpet under her feet. “And I imagine you’ve spent the entire time trying to figure out the quickest, easiest way to undo what we did.”

It took both people in the same place to do that, or at least knowing where both people were to do that. She could have been next door or in the Netherlands for all Owen had known. “More like I’ve been trying to figure out
why
we did what we did.”

Without looking at him, she slid the tray from the bedside table and held it over his lap. “Scoot up a little bit. I made lunch.”

Scooting up wasn’t all the easy with three bum limbs, but he wasn’t about to whine for help. And when she placed the food in front of him, he couldn’t stop a half-smile from crossing his face. “You didn’t forget.”

She’d made him a grilled cheese sandwich that included sliced onions and tomato. His favorite. Sitting beside it was a glass of milk poured over ice.

“It wasn’t that I had to remember. They’re my favorite, too, right?”

“Right.” That had been the craziest thing about those three days in Las Vegas. So much of it had felt so right. The way she fit against him, the way she liked her grilled cheese with onion and tomato, the way she took her milk over ice. But it was beyond preposterous to marry someone because their lunch choice mirrored your own. He’d realized that when she’d run away and not contacted him for five long weeks.

“I’ll never hear an Elton John song and not remember—”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. Somewhere into day two of their time together they’d made the mutual—and surreal—confession that they’d both misheard the chorus to the popular Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” as—

“Hold me closer, Tony Danza,” she sang softly.

Owen winced. “Though it’s nowhere close to being as dim as thinking Prince is singing ‘Pay the rent, Collette,’ in ‘Little Red Corvette.’”

She frowned at him, her full lower lip pushing into a pout. He’d probably once considered that cute. “It wasn’t me who thought Creedence Clearwater’s song about a bad moon rising boasts that immortal line, ‘There’s a bathroom on the right.’”

Now he frowned. “It’s a common mistake.”

Even her snorts had a delicacy to them. “Says the guy who attended
way
too many fraternity beer bashes.”

“Hey…” Well, there was a little truth in that, though how could she know? They hadn’t spent time talking about their college years. He grimaced. “We’re complete strangers to each other, aren’t we?”

A flush rose up her neck and she looked away again. “Eat your lunch.”

He picked up half the sandwich with his good hand. “What about you?”

“I’m not hungry.”

She’d eaten like a bird those days in Las Vegas. And drank like a fish? But no, although they’d spent
a fair amount of time in the bar at their hotel and also poolside with those froufrou, umbrella-topped drinks, he didn’t think alcohol had played a major role in the tipsy feeling he’d felt in her company—and in the spur-of-the-moment decision they’d made to say “I do” to the strains of “Blue Suede Shoes.”

“I blame Will and Emily,” he muttered. “We were under the influence of their first-love vibes.”