Page 63 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

Without even really thinking about it, I picked up the photograph and turned it over, not expecting much, but a note had been scrawled across the bottom right corner and my breath caught. Viola, 1954. The trip to see Our Cottage.

“Ryan,” I breathed, blinking hard as I stared at the note. “That’s my grandfather’s handwriting.”

He looked up from his laptop, his brow furrowed until he saw the picture in my hand. His eyes widened. “Is that another one of her?”

“Yeah.” I held out the photograph and he took it, glancing at the picture before slowly turning it over. “Her name is Viola.”

“It also looks like this was their cottage, not just his.”

My heart pitter-pattered in my chest and it was like I could feel the blood draining from my face. “I think he had an affair, Ryan. That’s the only explanation, right?”

Saying the words out loud was horrible, but Ryan’s features tightened and he sighed, then raked his fingers through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. “Look, I know what it’s like to have to process something like that. My dad did something similar to my mom, but that doesn’t mean it’s happened here.”

“I thought my grandfather was a good man,” I whispered, so shocked now that reality was fully staring me in the face that I couldn’t even find my voice.

“Maybe he was, Maggie. Let’s not jump to conclusions about someone who isn’t here to defend himself.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “The wedding picture is pretty significant. This could be something else entirely.”

He handed the picture back to me, a soft smile appearing on his lips as he held my gaze. “We don’t have proof of anything yet. These are only clues. If we keep following them, eventually, we’ll get to the truth.”

I kept looking into his eyes, a sense of peace settling over me when I registered the fact that he’d said we. Ryan wasn’t outright dismissing my suspicions or trying to convince me to leave the past in the past. I wasn’t sure if he actually meant to include himself in the investigation I intended to launch, but he had.

That meant a lot to me. Like, a lot.

There was definitely something here, but I suddenly didn’t feel so desperate to solve it. I supposed Ryan was right. There were other explanations.

When he finally turned back to his laptop to keep making arrangements for my dream wedding—a wedding most people would’ve considered either a nightmare or a disaster—I shifted closer to him without really meaning to.

The glow of the screen washed over his face as he typed something else into a search engine, frowning for a beat before he nodded and copied a few website addresses into a document open in another tab. Since it looked like he had things completely under control, I didn’t interrupt again, instead letting my mind wander to the day we’d had—and that kiss.

I rested my head against his shoulder, sort of expecting him to move or to ask what I was doing, but he didn’t. Instead, he shifted the blanket higher around me and kept typing with one hand, the steady rhythm of his fingers against the keyboard strangely comforting.

My eyes grew heavy as I listened to it, sleep threatening to drag me under until one final question occurred to me. “Ryan?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you mean to kiss me like that?”

The rhythmic typing stopped for a second, but then it started up again and I was asleep before I heard his answer. If he’d even given one at all.

CHAPTER 27

RYAN

When Maggie had fallen asleep last night, I’d been grateful she’d given me a reprieve in having to answer that fucking question she’d asked. A question that didn’t really have a right answer. Had I meant to kiss her like that?

No.

But if I’d told her that, she would’ve asked why I’d done it, then. That was where the tricky part came in. Sure, I knew why I’d done it, but I couldn’t exactly tell her it had happened that way because I hadn’t even tried to stop myself.

I’d stayed up half the night trying to come up with an acceptable answer that wouldn’t put either of us in an awkward position, but here was the kicker. I also didn’t want her to think I didn’t want her. I just couldn’t tell her that I did.

By the time I’d finally drifted off to sleep, I’d been no closer to an answer than I was right now, staring at the living room that suddenly looked like it belonged to an old-timey police detective. Maggie had woken up at the crack of dawn, refreshed after her full night’s sleep, and started carrying all sorts of papers, books, and photographs from the attic and her grandfather’s old study.

Hyper-focused on solving the mystery, she was bent over the small dining table, scanning through document after document. Whenever she found one that might merely even mention Viola, whether specifically or even just a woman or spouse in general, it went on one pile while the others were discarded on the chair.

I blew out a slow breath through my nose as I watched her, tying my shoelaces at the same time. “We need to finalize the vendors, Maggie. The more we can get done today, the sooner we can go back to the city.”

“So you go,” she said without even looking up at me. “I’ll focus on finding Viola.”