Love on the Run (Pine Harbour Book 5) Read online

  They’d bonded over shared secret loves of science-fiction television and caramel corn. Preferably consumed together, late at night, with a bottle of champagne.

  She squeezed her fingers together, then stretched them wide, trying to ease the stress-ache in her knuckles. She felt awful not being able to explain this properly to Hope, but how could she when she didn’t understand it completely herself?

  “I mean, I can’t tell you because I don’t really know,” she said slowly. That was the truth after all. “I freaked out after the show the other night. Took a cab to the airport and came straight here. And yes, it’s also that I don’t want to see him, I guess, but that’s not the only reason I needed to get away all of a sudden.”

  “You went to the airport straight after the show?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just happened to have your passport in your purse?” Hope gave her a disbelieving look.

  Yeah, she had. Ever since the tour started. The realization made her stomach roil. “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “No, not crazy. But concerning, yes. That’s why…” Hope pointed at the front door. “Just…talk to Dean. He’s the most level-headed guy Ryan knows. Is taking a security detail with you such a terrible idea? Lots of people do it.”

  It wasn’t a terrible idea, but she really didn’t need it.

  She took a long, slow breath in, then let it out. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you going back?”

  Damn Hope. Damn her for seeing right through the lies. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “Okay. Well, I’m going to invite him in for a cup of coffee.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Hope’s forehead furrowed as she knitted her brows together. “I know I’m pushing you, but…”

  But they didn’t have time for niceties.

  Hope was just as much a professional as Liana was. She understood the timeline. And she understood Liana, too. Maybe better than I do myself.

  “I thought for a second you were introducing us for a personal reason.”

  “God, no.” Hope gave her a look of alarm. “I mean, you don’t need… but no. I wouldn’t, anyway, and definitely not when you show up so freaked out.”

  Freaked out. An understatement if there ever was one. “I didn’t come here so you could fix this.”

  “Is there something that needs fixing?”

  She winced. She couldn’t lie to her friend. But she didn’t want to answer that question, either.

  “Okay. Then he’s coming in for a cup of coffee.”

  Liana could feel hot, splotchy patches of embarrassment creeping over her chest and up her neck. “Give me a few minutes,” she whispered, blinking back tears she’d thought she’d fought off successfully.

  This wasn’t at all what she’d meant to make happen. But that was the thing about impulsive, emotional actions, wasn’t it? The chain reaction that spilled forth was entirely out of your control.

  * * *

  — —

  * * *

  He was halfway through an are-you-fucking-serious text message to Zander when Hope opened the door and ushered him inside, apologizing profusely.

  With a weak, worried laugh, she waved him into the kitchen. “Liana’s just gone upstairs for a few minutes. Let’s have a cup of coffee. If you’re still willing?”

  Willing, yes. Skeptical that Liana wanted his help…absolutely. But this might be his new normal. He was in, no matter what.

  “We’re willing and able.” He accepted the mug and sat on one of the barstools in her kitchen.

  “I promise, she’s usually lovely.”

  He had no doubt. He could still feel the tug in his gut from when she’d blinked up at him from under her thick eyelashes. Lovely was an understatement. It was also beside the point.

  “So what’s going on that she’s—” He glanced around. Batshit crazy was probably the wrong thing to say. “Like that?”

  “I’m not entirely sure, but she’s not herself,” Hope said quietly. “It doesn’t help that her ex is going to be at this concert. Track Gantley.”

  The pieces were starting to come together. “They broke up quite a while ago, right?”

  “Eight years ago. But they still have a professional relationship. It’s mostly handled through her manager and the staff at his label, but from time to time they need to be in the same place and that’s awkward. She’s usually more level about it. Something else is rattling her right now.”

  He filed that away in his mind. “Okay. But he’s going to be at this concert.”

  “Exactly.” Hope’s phone rang and she excused herself with a quick apology.

  Dean didn’t mind. It gave him a minute to do a quick internet search on Liana and Track’s history. It didn’t take him long to get the gist of what she was dealing with. An awful lot of judgement for breaking up their relationship eight years earlier. Tabloid stories still to this day that she wanted him back, the kind of screaming headline that immediately made him doubt their veracity.

  Photos of her on dates, judging her outfits. Those same photos pasted beside photos of Track and his wife, who seemed to be pregnant more often than not.

  Rumours of… And he’d read enough.

  He tucked his phone away as Hope came back into the room.

  “Nearly a decade and he still has an upsetting effect on her?” Dean tried to soften the question, but Hope still bristled and he held up his hand. “I’m not saying that to be critical.”

  “She’s not a delicate flower,” the actress said, steel in her voice. “But Track messes with her head. It’s subtle, and he’s American’s golden boy, so nobody else sees it. He’s won artist of the year three times. He’s got a gorgeous wife and three kids with another on the way. Why would he care about what Liana does? That kind of bullshit.”

  There were key words that jumped out during an investigation, and Dean might not wear the badge anymore, but he was still a cop. And nobody else sees it set off all kinds of red flags for him. “Has she ever explicitly said anything to you about it?”

  Hope shook her head. “Never. Everything I know, I’ve figured out in the disconnect between the stuff you see in the media and what I know of my best friend.”

  “Maybe you should tell me more about her.”

  “She’s amazing. Vibrant and smart and talented. Funny and sexy. If you ask me, Track’s the one who’s never gotten over her.”

  “He’s married.”

  She snorted. “Like that ever stopped anyone. I think he’s still punishing her for breaking up with him. Punishing her for not accepting that men play by a different set of rules. But it’s not just about hurt feelings. I’m talking about him. He isn’t nice to her, he never was, and he’s hurting her because she stood up to him. He probably does it now just because it hurts her, no other reason.”

  He leaned forward. “You don’t need to convince me. I believe you.”

  She looked up, startled. “Really?”

  Jesus. He shouldn’t be shocked by her reaction, not after fifteen years on the force, but he was. Somehow, he’d hoped that wealth and worldly experience would have made this easier for these women. Apparently not. “Hope, I’ve had this conversation before. The first dozen times, I said some bonehead things. Doubted that a reasonable man would do such things. All the shit we’re taught from early age, like you said…subtly. But after a while you see a pattern. Of course it’s not news to women, because you’ve been taught something different from an early age. So it took me longer than I’d like to admit to come around to it, but when a woman says something is wrong in a relationship, I believe her. Without question.”

  She examined him closely, slowly, looking him in the eyes, then down at his mouth. His hands. He’d seen this before, too. The search for something to hang on to, some sign that it was okay to trust him.

  He had an advantage here. Hope knew him as a friend of her fiancé, and he hoped maybe she saw him as a friend herself. That would help.

 
Finally she relaxed. Her shoulders sagged as she dropped her guard and she shook her head. “It’s so hard to tell you about something that I only see the edges of. I’m not sure what is real and what I’m imagining. The same for her too, I bet. But I’ll tell you this: she was in a good place last spring, when she came to visit me, and I saw her in the fall and she was fine, then, too. Something serious has happened since the start of this tour. Something that has to be Track’s fault. Even if he didn’t orchestrate it, she’s not in a good place right now, and having to see him on the fourth is going to be really hard for her.”

  “She could…develop laryngitis.”

  Hope shook her head. “Not for just one concert. And she lives for performing on stage. She wouldn’t want to risk the rest of her tour. The label might get involved, or the tour promoter, with the insurance companies…Too risky. Besides, Track’s not just the label’s biggest star. He’s also part owner.”

  “Her ex is also her boss?”

  “Yeah. And he makes her life a nightmare before an album gets approved. There’s a reason she’s only had two out in the last six years.”

  Dean clenched his jaw. Zander had been right to pull him out of the party. This was fucked up. And it might be his first day on the job, but he wasn’t new to sticking up for what was right and fair. “Then let’s see what we can do about convincing your friend that maybe I can be on her side.”

  * * *

  — —

  * * *

  Liana lay on her back and counted backwards from ten, telling herself to get a grip. When that didn’t work, she tried a hundred, but she petered out somewhere around seventy.

  The problem was, she really had lost it in Savannah, and when she walked off stage, she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t made a bad decision to keep on walking.

  Officially, it was fine. The tour had taken a four day break. It wouldn’t be unusual for her to fly home to Nashville. Coming up north to see Hope was acceptable.

  Unofficially, she’d felt the emotional break coming even as she waited for the cab that night. So she wasn’t sure she could get a grip.

  And there was a stranger downstairs that Hope had thrust into the middle of Liana’s breakdown. She wanted to murder her best friend, and that wasn’t great, either.

  On the other hand…she was losing it.

  Of course Hope had taken one look at her and gone into career-salvage mode.

  Too bad Liana wasn’t sure she cared about salvaging anything.

  She got up and went to the washroom. Splashed cold water on her face, then paced back and forth a few times in the hallway, her mortification growing with each step.

  No. She did care about salvaging her reputation.

  And first step in that direction would be going downstairs and apologizing.

  “Go on now, make your peace,” she could practically hear Meemaw saying. So like a good southern girl, she squared her shoulder, checked her hair in the mirror, pursed her lips so they’d have some decent colour, and marched off to do the right thing.

  She found them in the kitchen, and the man—Dean—was sitting with his back to her. She paused in the doorway, waiting for them to finish talking. Somehow he was even bigger when sitting down. He looked like he could take Track.

  He looked like he could take an ox.

  “Just give her some time,” Hope said. “I’ve handled this badly.”

  “It sounds like an unexpected situation for the both of you. And we’re at your service. Really, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine,” Liana said, moving forward. He turned around, pivoting quite gracefully for a giant. She gave him a smile that felt more natural than most she’d given in the last while. Not quite happy, but authentic at least. “Hello again,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry about before.”

  He stood up—and up, and up. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, which made her five feet and a couple inches. She liked to pretend she was five and a half feet tall, but that took serious heels.

  And he had at least a foot on her.

  Yes, he would more than suffice as a bodyguard.

  If she was willing to go that route.

  He nodded at her and gruffly but quietly returned her greeting. “Hello. I think the apology should be mine to make. I shouldn’t have been talking about you. I was just trying to get an understanding of the situation.”

  She glanced at Hope. “What did you tell him?”

  Her best friend gave her an unhappy smile. “Not much. I told him I don’t like Track and…I think you’ve been stressed since the start of the tour.”

  Liana let out a quiet, unhappy laugh. “Yeah. I don’t like Track either.”

  She didn’t answer the bit about the tour stress, because she didn’t feel like she had any right to complain about the best job in the entire world. Her newfound anxiety was a weakness she’d get a quiet handle on all by herself.

  Dean sat back on his barstool, equalling out the height difference between them. He had an air of calm around him that belied the organic threat of his do-you-play-football? size, and his eyes were pretty gentle for a guy that looked like the rest of his face had been chiseled out of granite. And to his credit, he was focused on the here and now, and not the fact she’d hit on him the day before. “Let’s go back a few steps and introduce ourselves, maybe. I’m Dean. I’m a security guy, and Hope can vouch for me.”

  “I’m Liana. I’m neurotic.”

  He laughed, like for real. An out loud, straight teeth flashing chuckle that kept going and she found herself smiling again, too. This time not quite so ruefully.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this.”

  “No worries. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  He rocked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at Hope behind him. “That’s what she said. Complicated doesn’t scare me. How can I help?”

  “I…” She trailed off.

  Behind Dean, Hope stood up. “I’m going to go sit outside.”

  “You don’t need to,” Liana said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper.

  “How about I step outside for a minute?” Dean offered. He held up his phone. “I need to call Zander, anyway.”

  Hope waited until Dean closed the front door behind him, then she held up her hands. “Look, I know you don't really need a bodyguard. But you could use a friend—one you don't also employ," she added, clearly anticipating Liana’s protest that she had Jackie, her lead guitarist and closest friend on tour. "Think of Dean as my proxy."

  He was friendly, and kind, but there was something about him that unsettled Liana. She wrinkled her nose. “It would be easier if you could just abandon your family and come with me on tour."

  Hope laughed.

  Liana wasn't kidding. She sighed. "He won't have anything to do."

  "He'll be learning to be a bodyguard. Think of it as Bodyguard Bootcamp."

  "My tour is not the place for some country boy to play at—”

  “I’m thinking of taking Ryan and the kids with me on a film shoot next summer. I’ll need bodyguards, and I’ll need to know they’d do anything to protect our children. These guys might be the only option Ryan would accept.”

  Oh. Well, when she said it like that…Ryan’s first wife had been killed in a police raid, and to say he was overprotective of his children was an understatement. “Okay.”

  “So if you need to think of it as a favour to me…”

  “I said okay.” She smiled to soften the snap in her words. “You’re the only family I’ve got beyond my band. It’s not a favour. I’ll hire him. But I’m not going to bare my soul to him.”

  “I’d never ask you to do that. But you can trust him, should you need anything. I’m sure of that.”

  As they hugged, a dull regret settled in Liana’s chest. What would it be like to share Hope’s trust in people?

  Chapter Five

  When Dean came back inside, Hope excused herself to read on th
e deck, and Liana waited for him to ask her something. Say something. Do anything to guide the conversation, because she was at a loss.

  She listened to the hum of the fridge, the tick of the clock on the wall, and drew herself up to the full extent of her height.

  Nope. Still no words came to her.

  Dean just waited.

  She walked across the kitchen and got herself a glass of water. “You want a drink?” She stumbled over the offer, because she hadn’t forgotten the other day, but he pretended not to notice.

  “Sure.”

  She passed him the same, and he downed a quarter of it before giving her his undivided attention again.

  That prickled at her, so she gave him her attention, too. She looked him over again. “You’re wearing jeans.”

  He gave her a bland look. “I am.”

  “It’s hot outside.”

  “What should I be wearing?”

  “I don’t know. Shorts.” She was wearing jeans, too, although hers ended just below her knees. He didn’t point that out. And she was wearing a tank top, where he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, albeit rolled up, over another shirt beneath that. It was the middle of summer for goodness sake.

  “I’m used to wearing a bulletproof vest over a heavy navy blue uniform, as you may recall.” He gestured at his cotton shirt. “This is light compared to that. And we get nasty blackflies at night.”

  “How perfectly reasonable.” Man, she was grasping at straws here. She moved across the room again, restlessly roaming for a place to sit. She finally settled at the kitchen table, and Dean moved over there with her, sitting on one of the chairs kitty-corner to hers.

  When she didn’t push that conversation any further, he gave her a quiet, patient smile and called a spade a spade. “Are you always this petulant?”

  She laughed despite herself. “Only when I’m out of my depth.”