Page 1 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

CHAPTER 1

RYAN

“Ithink I’m going to be sick.”

I looked up from my phone to see a stricken expression on my mom’s face. We were in her study in our family home in Chicago. The morning sun streamed in through the windows and cast bright pools of light across the thick carpet, but right now, it really did look like that carpet was in danger.

Mom stared at her laptop screen, her cheeks white as snow and her eyes wide.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s going to be fine,” I said calmly.

She stood behind her intricately carved antique desk with one hand pressed to her chest and the other gripping her laptop. “It’s not going to be fine, Ryan. Look at this.”

I set my coffee and phone aside and stood from the armchair, knowing full well she was probably just freaking out over nothing. Naturally anxious, there were days now when the slightest hiccup could cause her to have a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, I’d learned that most problems in life could be solved with either money or a well-placed phone call—and the good sense to know which to use first. I strode across her office with the intention of checking on the problem and then talking her off the cliff, but when I glanced at her screen, I realized that this time, she might have a damn good reason to be worried.

“Oh. Uh, oops?”

“Oops? This is not an oops. It’s a disaster.”

Yeah, I can’t argue with that. I gave her shoulder a quick, comforting squeeze and wondered why she’d booked a warehouse in the Meatpacking District for a bridal shower in the first place.

Technically, it was an art gallery now, an expensive, very fashionable gallery I knew allowed private events, but they also regularly displayed the kind of art that would make any parent question the existence of morals in modern society.

Unfortunately, that was exactly the kind of exhibition they currently had installed.

She thrust the laptop toward me. “The photographs won’t be taken down for the event, Ryan. What am I supposed to do? When I made the booking, the gallery owner said we’d have exclusive use. These images are crude! This isn’t bridal. It’s basically porn.” Her voice dropped to a whisper when she uttered the word “porn” and I struggled not to chuckle at her panic.

“I think that just means no one else will be allowed in.” I glanced back at the photos prominently displayed on the gallery’s homepage. “Not that they would dismantle their entire curated display.”

The level of nudity in them balanced on a knife’s edge between artistic and pornographic, but the way those naked bodies had been arranged was sexually provocative. To say the least.

“This is a bridal shower for my friend’s daughter,” Mom whimpered. “I was entrusted with finding a venue. They’re going to be furious, Ryan.” It looked like she might have a stroke for real this time as she collapsed into the chair behind her desk and buried her head in her hands. “She’s such a sweet girl. She cannot have her bridal shower surrounded by… by…”

She waved feebly at the screen instead of finishing the sentence, her shoulders trembling as she let out a choked sob.

“She can’t have it surrounded by art?”

“That is not art.”

“Incorporate it with a bridal shower game. Don’t women go feral for those at these kinds of parties? Pin the tail on the naked aristocrat.”

“Ryan!”

I bit back a smile. “Relax. I’ll fix it.”

Clearly, she valued this friend more than her own blood pressure, and as it happened, she was trying to arrange this bridal shower in the city where I was trying to live full time. My family kept trying to bring me back into the fold here in Chicago, but I’d been mainly in New York since college.

“What good would I be if I hadn’t made a few connections over there?” I teased, squeezing her shoulder again before pulling my phone back out of my pocket. “Just keep breathing. I’ve got this.”

Less than two minutes later, the crisis had been averted and I pocketed my phone again. Smiling, I sank to my haunches in front of her. It still killed me to see her so frazzled and frail. Once upon a time, this tiny, silver-haired woman had been a powerhouse on the social scene.

Despite her natural tendency toward anxiety, she’d arranged entire galas in less than a day and she’d never run into a problem she couldn’t solve. That wasn’t true anymore. Thanks, Dad, for being a criminal piece of shit.

“Hey, look at me,” I said gently, using a tone I only ever used with her. “The shower is now in a restaurant that overlooks Central Park. It’s got a beautiful terrace and no naked people on the walls.”

Her shoulders slowly dropped as she lifted her eyes to mine. “Really?”