The Sun Sister (The Seven Sisters #6) - Lucinda Riley Page 0,106

only been three weeks, for Christ’s sake, and the euphoria of getting clean and the safe environment I was living in would disappear like mist once I was forced back into the never-ending circuit of my ‘real’ life. I’d start having the odd drink, then maybe taking a line socially, and then eventually, I’d end up back here, but probably worse off, and maybe eventually wind up like Vanessa. But until I acknowledged all my angst and let it out, I knew I would always be in danger.

As I was thinking all this, I had the oddest instinct that I was being followed. Luckily, I was hanging a right around the circuit and was able to look back and see that the edible guy I’d seen in the canteen was maybe a hundred yards behind me and catching up fast. Well, he wouldn’t, because I didn’t want him to for all sorts of reasons I couldn’t work out, so I upped my pace and stretched out the gap. But he was still closing in on me, even though I was now running as fast as I could. The end of the trail was only a couple of hundred yards away, so I put my feet down to maximum and headed full pelt for it.

Reaching the finish line, I ran for the water cooler, desperate for a drink and panting heavily.

‘That’s some gas you’ve got in your tank,’ a rich, well-modulated voice said from behind me. ‘Excuse me,’ it added as a large hand with long, elegant fingers – the pinkie adorned with a gold class ring – reached for a cup as I moved out of the way. ‘I ran the five thousand metres for my college and never got beat. You run for yours?’

‘I didn’t go to college,’ I said as I lifted my head to look up at him, which was an unusual feeling.

‘Hey, that’s not an all-American accent, is it?’ he asked me as I took another cup of water and poured it over me. Even though it was early, the sun was already beating down.

‘No, it’s kind of part-French. I was raised in Switzerland.’

‘Oh really?’ he said as he eyed me more closely. And then, ‘Do I know you? You seem familiar somehow.’

‘No, we’ve never met before.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He smiled at me. ‘But you sure do look like I know you. I’m Miles, by the way. You?’

‘Electra,’ I sighed, waiting for recognition to dawn on his face. Which it did.

‘Wow . . . okay,’ he said, throwing his cup into the trash and digging his hands into his shorts pocket. ‘I was looking at a twenty-foot-high billboard of you when I drove to the airport last week.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I gotta get back now.’

‘Sure, so have I.’

We walked back towards The Ranch in silence. Something about this man was making me feel shy and girly. I guessed he was in his late thirties by his confidence and the grey that peppered the tightly curled hair on his scalp.

‘Is it okay to ask you what you’re in for?’ he said.

‘Yeah, there are no secrets here, are there? Alcohol and substance abuse.’

‘Ditto.’

‘Really? I saw you in the canteen last night and you didn’t look like a guy who’d just gone through detox.’

‘I haven’t, I’ve been clean for over five years now, but I just come back here every year to rest and remind myself what’s at stake. It’s easy to think you can handle everything when you’re here with support all around you, but out there in the big bad world, it can close in on you again.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ he said. ‘The pressures build up and . . . I want to make sure I never explode and end up back where I was, but hey, you must know all about that.’

‘Yup,’ I said as we arrived at the entrance to The Ranch.

‘All I can say is, don’t rush it, take your time. It’s a disease we can never be cured of; the answer is to learn how to manage it properly. Listen to what the people here say, Electra, because they know how to save your life. See you around.’ He gave me a small wave and marched off along the corridor on a pair of toned legs that were even longer than my own.

‘Well,’ I whispered to myself, feeling shell-shocked. Miles had an air of gravitas about him that reminded me of my grandmother. In any court,