Page 56 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“Pretty, aren’t they?”

I spun to find Maggie standing on the other end of the foyer. Today, she’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail that shone gold in the sunlight streaming through the high windows behind her. She had almost no makeup on, and she’d nearly given her mother a coronary in her jeans with a regular, fitted black tee.

As far as I was concerned, she looked hot as hell but in a platonic way. Obviously.

She also looked smug, which could only mean bad things for me. “What happened?”

“I’m getting my carnival,” she whispered when she got closer, pumping her eyebrows before heading for the staircase. “We won, Ryan.”

We? No.

I stared after her as she crossed the polished wooden floors, her hips swaying ever so slightly from one side to the other. It suddenly looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, but I suspected there was something pretty important she’d forgotten about.

Again.

“Have you talked to Daniel yet?”

Her shoulders stiffened and she paused for a beat before glancing back at me over her shoulder. “Not yet, but I will, Ryan. I just needed to get the go-ahead from my parents first.”

She spun back around and ascended the stairs without looking back, disappearing into the cavernous depths of the house while I just stood there, staring and wondering where this left me. I’d successfully seen her back to her family. By all logic, that meant I was free to leave without her, but I still hovered for a minute, knowing my job wasn’t quite done yet. Evidently, there was now going to be a wedding that I’d have to help her plan, even if the mere thought of it made my stomach churn.

And not because I was going to have to figure out how to hire at least a dozen carnies. Although that was going to be a nightmare, it wasn’t really the part that was bothering me. The reason I felt sick to my stomach was because it was her wedding.

I didn’t like the thought of that at all.

If this had been just another family obligation, another problem to solve, or another deal to close, I would have known exactly how to handle it, but I’d spent the last month watching Maggie become who she was when nobody was telling her who she was supposed to be.

Now, I was supposed to stand on the sidelines and watch her marry someone else. And I’d agreed to help her plan the event where she would be doing it. It seemed crazy. I knew this woman—probably better than anyone else right now. I knew she didn’t want to do this and I knew that even while we were planning, she was going to keep searching for a way out of it.

But on the other hand, I’d gotten her through the first hurdle. She was back with her family. Finally, for the first time in too many weeks, I would have some space to breathe. Maybe that would help.

Yeah, it’ll definitely help.

I would have my bed and my apartment back. Maybe it was even time to go out and find someone to blow off a little steam with. My stomach sort of curdled at the idea of doing it, but I just needed to get out of this odd little bubble she and I had found ourselves in.

It couldn’t be that hard.

Circumstances had kept us in much too close proximity for a while, but now that our cohabitation was over, all those fucked up things I’d been feeling would go away. I was sure of it.

I just had to push through.

It’s only up from here. It had to be.

CHAPTER 24

MAGGIE

The clock on my return to my family’s good graces was ticking. I could feel it. As I looked out at the gardens of a small boutique hotel not far from my parents’ house, I knew all the way down to the very marrow of my bones that if I didn’t produce solid evidence of a wedding being planned very soon, they would cut me off again.

Probably for good this time.

Every conversation with my mother ended with a pointed reminder that we were moving forward. My father kept saying the dreaded words, responsibility and expectations. Marcus, while he was considerably less cold about it, was constantly telling me little things about Daniel.

I knew that they were close and I appreciated that he’d listened to my concerns about not knowing the man I was going to marry. Obviously, he was trying to help me feel like I was getting to know Daniel through him, but that was different.

Plenty of people all around the world felt like they knew their favorite celebrities simply because they heard or read about them, but that didn’t mean they actually knew who that person was. Even learning true things instead of just gossip about another human being didn’t automatically mean that you knew them.

That was the problem I had to solve before I could fully unveil my completely insane wedding plan. I had to confirm that the groom still wanted to do it. No matter how many nice things Marcus said about him, the truth was that Daniel might well have changed his mind and I still didn’t know him even well enough to know if he would have told me that over a text or if that was why he wanted to talk in person.