My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) by Helen Conrad Page B

that, “Let’s face it,” she whispered, taking an orange out of the silver fruit bowl in the center of the table, “I’d love to have Reid.”
    Was that really true? She peeled the orange and pulled apart the sections, then popped each into her mouth, one at a time, her mind completely focused on the question.
    Did she want Reid? Her mind tried to dispel such a thought. He wasn’t the same man she’d loved all those years ago. He’d changed, hardened. He seemed to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into the high society life she’d never been able to fit into. She sighed. No. It could never be right.
    Not that it was a problem she was going to have to face anytime soon.   She allowed herself a rueful smile as she searched among the fragrant peels for just one last section of orange. Reid had made it quite clear what he wanted from her, and it had nothing to do with what she’d been considering. He wanted her to reconcile with her parents.
    She left the breakfast table, luxuriating in the fact that she wouldn’t have to clean up and do the dishes. Everywhere she looked there were ghostly servants slithering around in the background. She’d forgotten about servants. It had been so long since she’d been in a house that employed them.
    She went back up to the bedroom she was using and looked down at the house next door again. A truck drove up. It was the gardener. She watched while he got out and began unloading his mower and edger and other equipment.
    She’d never realized Reid had such a panoramic view of what went on at her house. All those years, he’d probably known a lot more about her movements than she’d guessed.
    Only once could she remember having had an inkling of how much he knew. She’d been seventeen and flush with the success she was having at public school. Her parents had gone to Beverly Hills to a party. They were planning to stay the night. Jennifer had been left alone with just one maid for company—and she was old and almost deaf and went to bed right after dinner. Jennifer had invited a boy over.
    Lance Taylor was his name. She remembered him well. A swaggering early Marlon Brando type, she’d thought he was pretty cute—and so different from the boys she’d dated at the country club. He seemed earthy and basic and thrilling.
    She’d invited him to come over, and his visit had turned into a nightmare. He’d guzzled her father’s liquor, criticized the interior decorating, and then decided they both should go skinny-dipping in her pool.
    She’d had about enough of him by then, and she’d definitely ruled out dropping her bathing suit, but he thought amorous persuasion would do the trick. They’d wrestled alongside the pool, Jennifer hissing, “Cut it out, Lance!” and Lance muttering, “Come on, baby, gimme one kiss.”
    Luckily, Reid arrived in the midst of all the silliness and threw Lance Tanner out after giving him a swollen, bloody nose.
    Reid had seen what was going on from the very place she was sitting, she was sure. She laughed softly as she remembered his stern lecture—and how embarrassed she’d been. It was no wonder he’d formed a picture of her wildness that was a little exaggerated from the facts. That scene, along with what had probably been relayed to him by his mother, on whose shoulder Jennifer’s mother regularly wailed her disappointments in her daughter, were enough to tarnish any reputation. What else had he seen from this window?
    Jennifer stayed glued there for another hour. Nothing much was going on, but it held her with a strange fascination. Her mother and father were inside that house. So near and yet so far.
    She fantasized walking up to the familiar front door and banging the huge brass knocker. The maid would be unknown to her—her mother never could keep maids longer than six months at a time. A stranger would open the door.
    “May I see Mrs. Thornton, please?” Jennifer would ask, and then suddenly, there she would be, walking quickly