Page 20 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“Get. In. The. Car.”

“No.”

Thunder cracked overhead and Ryan jumped, immediately looking up at the sky. Clouds had started gathering on my walk back to the cottage, but I hadn’t realized they meant a storm was rolling in.

Rain began falling a moment later, however, an absolute deluge that soaked him in seconds. I saw him sigh and close his eyes for a beat, but then he turned back to me and pointed at the car again.

“Can we please just go now? We’ll talk on the way home.”

I smiled sweetly and took a few steps back, closing and locking the balcony door once more. Ryan stared up at me through the rain, but I waved and walked away, dashing toward the front door to make sure I’d locked that behind me too.

CHAPTER 9

RYAN

Isat on the front porch in the rain, texting Holden about my current situation.

Me: Found her.

Three dots appeared almost immediately, his reply popping up a moment later.

Holden: And?

Me: She locked me out.

Holden: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ryan: If you really want to laugh, I left my car keys inside and it’s raining cats and fucking dogs. Ain’t life grand?

Holden: This keeps getting better.

I sighed. He wasn’t wrong. When I’d gotten here and actually found the secret cottage, I’d thought half the battle had already been won, but it hadn’t quite turned out that way. I’d already messaged Marcus to let him know I’d found her, but now he would actually expect me to bring her home and that?

Well, it wasn’t likely to happen. Maggie wasn’t leaving. That much, I’d already established.

If I wanted her to get in the damn car, I was going to have to physically carry her out of that house. Obviously, I didn’t want to have to do that.

At this point, I honestly wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten here anymore. Last week, I’d been dealing with acquisitions in New York and looking forward to the wedding being over so I could get back to my life without any wedding talk in it. Being locked out of a secret family cottage in Massachusetts, soaked to the bone, while trying to convince a runaway bride to come out of hiding wasn’t in my job description. If only I’d kept my damn keys in my pocket.

I could’ve been halfway back to the city by now, with Marcus on speaker, telling him that I couldn’t get through to his sister after all and that if they wanted her they could come get her their damn selves. None of this had a single thing to do with me, and yet, here I was.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and when I glanced at the screen, I hoped it was Marcus, but instead of it being her brother—the guy who actually had a stake in the outcome of this mission—it was mine. Clearly, making fun of me over text hadn’t been enough for Holden.

I slid my thumb across the screen and sighed as I leaned back against the wooden wall behind me. “Okay. Go on. Rub it in.”

“I plan to,” he said happily. “I’ve been laughing for the last five minutes. This is entertaining as hell.”

“Well, I’m glad someone is enjoying it, because it sure as hell ain’t me.”

He chuckled some more but then finally sighed. “How did you even end up in this mess, bro? I thought Mom just roped you into helping with the wedding. I didn’t realize that meant becoming an honorary member of the Pembroke family.”

I snorted. “I wish. At least I would’ve gotten something out of it, then.”

“So why are you there? You should’ve just told Marcus to go after her.”

“He didn’t think she’d listen to him, but I honestly don’t know why that became my problem,” I said, dropping my head back against the wood and closing my eyes. “I know good press, though. Unfortunately, I know bad press better and Maggie only has a limited amount of time to smooth this over before the tabloids run wild.”

The Thayer name had been dragged through enough headlines in my lifetime that I knew exactly how quickly a story could turn. The longer she stayed gone, the worse it would get. Right now, people were talking about a postponed wedding, but by tomorrow, that could change.