“Tuesday,” Katie said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “You know, I ran into Brendan in this very park during Venery’s concert three years ago.”
“We got married a year to the day later.” Brendan moved in and, hooking his fingers inside her jeans, pulled his wife to his chest. “I love you, Katelyn.”
“I love you, baby.” And she kissed him.
With the foil to his plans taken care of, Matt grinned. He wasn’t about to share Gina’s company with anyone tonight—not her family, nor his. “Another time. We’ve got a celebration of our own to get to.”
“Yeah?” The corners of her mouth turning up, Gina bit her lip.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d catch you, bunny?” He looked into those hazel-green eyes, and skimming his nose along her pulse, Matt inhaled her distinctive scent. “I’ll be fair and give you a head start.”
He always did have an excessive amount of leftover energy to burn off after a show.
Fuck it.
“Run.”
“Run.”
Was he serious?
Gina glanced down at her feet, cursing the trendy booties she wore. They were sonotdesigned for a frolic through the woods. But not one to back away from a challenge, she lifted her chin and met his wolfish gaze. “Catch me if you can, rock star.”
Matt grinned.
“One hundred. Ninety-nine…”
Calmly, she moved past her brothers, securing the bumbag around her waist, and inhaled thick night air steeped in the smells of popcorn, beer, and cotton candy. In front of her, a crew carried equipment off the stage. Behind her, the band’s tour bus and a line of town cars idly waited. She could stick to the smooth, paved running trail that meandered through the park. Whether Gina went left or right, either direction would take her to First Avenue, but that’s not where she wanted Matt to find her.
“Ninety-three. Ninety-two…”
Gina took off her boots, and with one in each hand, she looked toward the trees and ran.
One second, warm asphalt heated her feet, and the next, cool, tender blades tickled the bottom of her soles. Crazy how this swath of forest grew amid towering concrete and steel.Scrambling through bushes, she rested her frame against the rough bark of a mighty oak. Gina couldn’t hear him anymore, but she counted along to the rhythm of his cadence in her head.
Sixty-nine, sixty-eight…
She closed her eyes. The distant din of the festival had faded, replaced by the call of a cricket, the faint, whirring buzz of cicadas. Gina could almost imagine herself in the middle of a haunted wood, mist coiling around her ankles, the big, bad wolf on the hunt for his prey, closing in from behind her.
Would he take her with a ferocious hunger and tear at her pretty clothes?
Or lay her down gently on the forest floor and lift the hem of her dress?
With anticipation mounting, her heart thumped wildly in her chest.
Forty-seven, forty-six…
She’d lost her bearings, and unsure which way she should go now, Gina darted to a tree up ahead. Eventually, she would come upon the tall iron fence that bordered the park on the south, the east, and the west. While Coventry Park didn’t come close to Lincoln Park’s twelve hundred acres, it was sizable enough. Densely forested at the rear and along its winding trails, how would Matt ever be able to find her?
Twenty-five, twenty-four…
Should she pick a spot and stop running? Because zig-zagging from the trunk of one tree to another in her bare feet had her winded already. Nothing looked familiar. Sweat clung to the fine hairs standing on her skin. Dried leaves crunched beneath her toes.
Three.
Two.
I’m coming for you, bunny.
