Read Online That Runaway Summer by Darlene Gardner - Free Book Online

were gone.”
    Jill tried to summon the willpower to dissuade him from confiding in her further and failed. There was too much about him she still wanted to know. “Didn’t you see it coming?”
    “Nope.” His tone was self-deprecating. “She’s an interior designer. She’d talked about how cool it would be to work in New York City. I could never see myself living in a big city and told her so. I thought that was the end of it.”
    “But it wasn’t?”
    “Not for her. She lives in Manhattan with her new husband. He’s an actor who does off-Broadway plays. They got married six months ago.”
    “I sure am sorry,” Jill said.
    “I’m not.” He shrugged, his half smile not reaching his eyes. “Well, not anymore. It hit me pretty hard at first. It’s probably even the reason I accepted the job in Indigo Springs. I can finally see it was for the best.”
    “How so?”
    “I found out she’d been planning to leave me for a month, yet she never let on. If she could keep that big of a secret from me, she wasn’t the person I thought she was.”
    Jill understood exactly what he meant. For a relationship to work, the two people involved needed to be open and honest with each other. The way she’d tried to be with her boyfriend in Atlanta before he’d used her confidences to betray her.
    The way she’d learned she could never be with anyone as long as she was on the run with her brother.
    “I’m making you uncomfortable,” Dan said. “Sorry.”
    “Not at all.” Another lie.
    “I’m not sure why I told you all that.” He let out a breath and shook his head. “Maybe so you’d understand why I thought I wasn’t ready to date anyone.”
    Yet he was now.
    It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said so. Jill heard him loud and clear. Something had changed in the week and a half since the cookout, something that made him amenable to the idea of dating again.
    Of dating her.
    “Chris and I really should be going.” She scrambled to her feet so fast the blood rushed to her head. She fought the light-headedness and moved toward her brother, who was still crouched beside the goat. “Chris! Time to go.”
    “Just a couple more minutes,” Chris called back.
    “You heard me,” she said more sharply than she’d intended. “We need to go. Now.”
    “Was it something I said?” Dan’s voice trailed her.
    She turned to answer and found him standing just inches from her, tall and dark but not at all imposing. Because she wanted to move forward, she took a giant step backward.
    How could she explain that keeping her distance was for his good as well as hers? Even if she could risk getting close to someone, it couldn’t be Dan. Not when she was even more secretive than his ex-fiancée.
    “Oh, no. Not at all.” She smiled to punctuate her denial. “It’s just getting late, is all.”
    “It’s nine o’clock,” he pointed out.
    “Chris goes to sleep at nine-thirty.”
    “Not in the summer.” Chris trudged up to them. “That’s only when we’re having school.” To Dan, he said, “We start at seven-thirty.”
    “I thought classes at Indigo Springs Elementary started later than that,” Dan said.
    “I don’t go to school there,” Chris said. “I do school with Jill.”
    Yet another nugget of information Jill would rather Chris had kept to himself. “I homeschool him.”
    Before Dan could even think about quizzing her over why a woman working multiple jobs didn’t send her brother to public school, she said, “We owe you a great big thank-you for helping us with Tinkerbell. Isn’t that right, Chris?”
    “Yeah.” He cast another longing look at Tinkerbell. “Thank you, Dan.”
    “Any time.” Dan spoke directly to her brother. “I’m going to reset Tinkerbell’s leg tomorrow. If you like, you can stop by the office and see her.”
    “That’d be great!” Chris said, his mood instantly improved.
    Her brother repeated that sentiment so many times on the brief walk back home that Jill