Czytaj książkę: «Safe Harbour»

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS AWARE of the dull ache in her calf muscles as they tensed with each footfall while she ran, for the most part, parallel to the shoreline.

Waves flowed in, then ebbed away, sometimes drenching her up to the ankles. Stephanie Roman hardly noticed. She kept her mind focused on her goal, reaching the sand dune whimsically shaped like a cave for vertically challenged elves.

Stevi, as her family had always called her, was fairly new to this concept of getting regular exercise. She’d undertaken running a few short months ago as a way of channeling her energy.

Once begun, however, she found this form of exercise addictive, a realization that took her completely by surprise. But even as she craved it, running to her was a chore, something she needed to mark off on her to-do checklist before she could continue, unobstructed, with the rest of her day.

She didn’t realize that she was addicted to it until, overwhelmed with work, she tried skipping a run and found herself feeling utterly out of sync with her own body.

Less than a month ago, she had been juggling classes, a part-time job—she helped out at the inn—and her artwork. She created many of the paintings that hung in the rooms in her family’s inn.

A select few of her works of art were on the walls of a local art gallery.

They represented her start.

Now that college and her classes were finally part of her past, with a degree in art to show for it, Stevi’s time was freed up somewhat. Except she was still out here, on the beach, running as fast as she was able to, at six in the morning.

Just her, the water and the seagulls.

One thing down, everything else to go.

Not that there was all that much to get done these days. After handling Alex’s and Cris’s weddings, she’d discovered she had a real knack for event planning. And while business at the inn was continuing at a steady, brisk pace, there were only a handful of dinner parties for her to put together for the guests. Stevi had suddenly found herself with next to nothing to do.

Without events to plan or classes to study for, she was feeling incredibly restless. It was only a week since graduation, but she was already bored to tears and dying for some sort of excitement.

Stevi accelerated her pace, pushing harder.

Oh, she was well aware that she should be grateful that her life was as good, as comfortable, as it was. There were no deep, dark secrets—or shallow, light ones for that matter—no family rifts. She had a wonderful family, she got along well with her father, her sisters and even her brothers-in-law.

Stevi blew out a breath. She supposed it was some kind of sin in the grand scheme of things to feel this dissatisfied when there wasn’t one single bad thing in her life to point a finger at.

But that didn’t change the fact that she desperately craved some excitement, something to inspire her art.

That was why, a year ago, she began considering the possibility of moving to New York City, at least for a while. New York City was everything that Ladera was not. It represented a complete change of pace. After all, New York City was the city that never slept.

New York was the home of the incredible Metropolitan Museum of Art. She felt herself growing excited just thinking of the Met.

New York represented the answer to her prayers.

The only thing stopping her from uprooting this second—as impetuous as that sounded, and she was nothing if not admittedly impetuous—was guilt. Stevi knew, even though he hadn’t said a word to her, that her father didn’t want her to move away, much less move to New York.

Her dad was a warm, loving man. He’d dealt with his share of sorrow and illnesses, but somehow he’d always managed to find a way to get up again after life had given him a devastating punch to the gut. How could she turn her back on a man like that? Her father was a man who thrived on having his family not just close by, but around him.

And so far, they all were.

Granted Alex and Wyatt had a house in Los Angeles, but that was mostly for Wyatt’s convenience so he had somewhere to stay when he was in the middle of selling one of his movie scripts. The rest of the time, Wyatt and Alex lived here at the inn.

By choice.

Wyatt had once told her that his fondest memories of his childhood—as well as of his father—were all created here at the inn, where he and Uncle Dan, as she and her sisters all thought of Wyatt’s father, spent their summers. And even Cris, who could have lived in a mini-mansion because of Shane’s construction skills, stayed at the inn, in the wing Shane had built after he finished the expansion that had brought him here in the first place.

Now Alex and Wyatt were going to have a baby and Cris’s five-year-old son, Ricky, was always with his grandfather, so it wasn’t as if she’d be abandoning her dad to a life of solitude if she left.

With her younger sister, Andy, rounding out their numbers, there were plenty of family on hand.

Despite that, the thought of leaving the inn made her feel really guilty.

Yet staying here might just drive her stir-crazy.

People came to Ladera-by-the-Sea and willingly paid top dollar to bask in its tranquility, in its soothing peacefulness—in all the things that were driving her away.

Maybe, Stevi tried to console herself, if she got away for a while, gave New York City an honest try, she might just get it out of her system. Maybe she’d discover that that sort of life really wasn’t for her and that what she had right here in her own backyard was what mattered.

But she knew that if she didn’t get the opportunity to contrast and compare the two ways of life, she was never really going to appreciate what she had.

Okay, Stevi decided, feeling determined. She had her course of action planned out.

She was going to tell her father that she was going to New York City on an extended vacation, to see the sights and take in the museums and the art galleries. Knowing her father, she was fairly certain he would object if she told him she was undertaking this New York adventure on her own, so she wouldn’t mention that part.

Right, and he wouldn’t ask who you were going with.

Stevi ran even faster. Her calves protested, threatening to cramp.

Maybe she’d ask one of her friends to come with her. Oh, not for as long as she planned on staying, but just long enough for her to find some temporary place to land. Maybe an apartment being sublet.

Too bad Wyatt no longer lived there, she thought. As a boy, after his parents had gotten divorced, his mother had taken Wyatt to live there.

But then, of course, if he’d never moved out here, he never would have become a screenplay writer, never would have married her sister.

Everything turned out for the best in the end. And it would again.

At least she fervently hoped so.

Her heart rate up, her calves aching, she glanced at her watch to see how long she had been at it.

Stevi frowned as she made out the numbers, then looked up and ahead.

Rather than being on her way back by now, she had just managed to reach the squat sand dune.

That meant she was only halfway finished with her run.

Stevi sighed. There was all that distance to run back. Or walk back if she was too tired, she thought, entertaining the possibility for exactly twenty seconds.

She was in far better shape than that, she reasoned, egging herself on to pick up her pace once again.

“C’mon, Stevi, you can do this. Show your stuff. Run like you mean it, not like some little old lady who can’t put one foot in front of the other.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something in the distance, something bobbing up and down in the water.

Most likely, she reasoned as she continued running toward it, it was either a dead fish or, as it was nine times out of ten, a large clump of seaweed.

She and her sisters often came down to the beach to clear the seaweed away. Half the time, it smelled like rotten eggs.

She changed direction slightly, running to where she thought she had spotted the seaweed.

Her eyes widened as she drew closer to the debris that had been washed ashore. Her breath got stuck in her throat.

There was no longer a question in her mind what she was looking at. The clump of seaweed had somehow managed to turn into the very real form of a man.

A man lying very still and facedown in the sand.

She didn’t remember how the last fifteen feet were reduced to less than a foot. Couldn’t remember if she ran toward the prone body or if she approached it cautiously. Given her usual recklessness, she probably ran.

But suddenly, there she was, standing over the immobile body of a man, wondering if he was dead or just unconscious.

“Mister?” she addressed softly.

There was no indication that he had heard her.

“Mister?” she said a little louder this time.

Still no reaction.

She put her hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. Again, no response.

Was he dead?

So far, in her world, death was something that occurred offstage, like her mother’s passing and Uncle Dan’s recent demise.

Her breath felt as if it had become solid and was backing up in her throat.

Drawing her courage to her like a shield, Stevi took hold of his shoulder again, rolling him to turn him faceup.

It wasn’t easy.

He was far from a small man. She wasn’t good at judging things like height, but he had to be well over six feet. And young. Those were sculpted muscles she was pulling on, hard even though they weren’t tensed.

When she finally got him on his back so that she could get a better look at him, Stevi’s breath caught in her throat.

She had to be looking down into the handsomest face she had ever seen, bar none. And—she was no expert when it came to this—she was fairly sure that was a bullet wound in his chest close to his shoulder.

Now that he was on his back, she saw that he was bleeding.

Tearing the bottom of her oversize T-shirt, she bunched it up into a huge wad and pressed it against the wound. She needed it to stay in place, but it wasn’t as though she came equipped with bandages or tape—or rope.

But she had a headband, she thought. Pulling it off, she looped it up his arm to his chest and then tied it as best she could.

Leaning in closer, Stevi tried to find some signs of life, some indication that he was still taking in air and that his heart was beating.

Just when she was inches away from his face, her attention focused on his chest, the man’s eyes suddenly flew open.

Stevi stifled a gasp.

“No police,” he said in a low, raspy voice, grasping her wrist.

The next second, his hold loosened, his fingers lax against her wrist.

He was unconscious again.