Runaway (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 4)

“How? How can it?” Jasper breathed. “I shouldn’t be having these thoughts about someone her age.”

“It is only five years between you,” Oliver replied. “She is two and twenty. Most women her age are married with children by now.”

“I wanted a wife who was closer to my age. You know, so we could share things,” Jasper growled.

Oliver grinned at him. “You will share things. A lot of things. She can bring you just as much, if not more happiness than any woman closer to your age. Why are you making such an issue of it?”

“Do you know, I have absolutely no idea.” But Jasper did know. It was because age was the only thing keeping him away from her. Without something, Jasper suspected he was going to make a fool of himself before this investigation was over and Molly and Oscar were free to go about their own lives.

“It is unprofessional,” Jasper hissed.

“You should try telling that to all the others who have met their mates during our bloody investigations. If love were a killer half the bloody Star Elite would have been wiped out by now,” Oliver snorted. “We have men dropping like flies.”

Jasper grinned because there had been quite a lot of weddings of late. “At least the weddings give us all a chance to get together and relax for a while.”

“Remember that when it is your turn,” Oliver informed him sagely. “Just remember that having Molly in your life might make you enjoy life a little more. Can that be a bad thing?” Oliver asked.

“You make it sound as if you are contemplating getting wed,” Jasper mused wryly.

“I am not averse to it. If the right woman came along,” Oliver replied.

Jasper knew that the right woman had come along for him. Unfortunately, she had brought a heck of a lot of trouble with her.

CHAPTER TEN

Molly walked until she was so exhausted that she had to sit down. The only place to sit was on a low wall which ran alongside the main road. She eyed the shop beside her with a hunger that seemed to rumble all the way through her. Her stomach ached she was so very hungry, but she had no money to buy anything. The serious problem she faced was how she was going to get her things out of the safe house without alerting the Star Elite to her presence.

“Morning.”

Molly jerked when someone came and sat beside her. She looked up at him, and mentally groaned when she recognised Phillip.

“You have been following me, haven’t you?” Molly whispered in disgust. She hadn’t noticed. It was deeply concerning because she had to wonder who else was following her.

“Someone needs to,” Phillip replied. “What kind of government operative would I be if I lost the woman I was supposed to protect?”

Molly sighed.

“When it became apparent you weren’t going to let Jasper help, I had no choice but to keep an eye on you.” Phillip waved to the street before them. “Do you have any idea where you are going, or where you intend to go?”

“I need my belongings,” Molly replied. She stubbornly refused to admit to him that she had no idea where she was.

“You have been followed, and not just by me,” Phillip assured her. “You do know that, don’t you?”

Molly winced. “Denzel will follow because he thinks he can do my aunt’s dirty work for her and get us to go back. We are nothing to her but an income she doesn’t have to work for.”

“She is a thief if she has been receiving an allowance to give to you but hasn’t been handing it over,” Phillip warned. “She has to face justice for it. Even at two and twenty, if she is not your legal guardian, she can take a rent for accommodating you, and an allowance to provide your food etcetera. However, she isn’t allowed to help herself to your allowance you are supposed to have for your personal needs. That, my dear, is fact.”

“I don’t have any access to my father’s solicitor. I don’t have the money to pay him for his services, and don’t have the ability to get out of the house long enough without Denzel, or Edith to be able to go and see him without them interfering,” Molly told him.

She had no idea why she should take this stranger into her confidence. She had never trusted anybody like him before, except Jasper and that had only been after he had saved her life. It was possibly the exhaustion that had lowered her barriers and left her needing the help of somebody to try to find a way out of the situation she was in.

“You need to come back to the safe house,” Phillip suggested.

Molly shook her head. “You need to return what is mine.”

“Where will you go?”

“Anywhere, so long as it is far away from here,” Molly replied vaguely.