Page 70 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

Another man, who had been behind the latest addition to our conversation, nodded his agreement. “Blanche and Brutus are great. They’ve been with us a long time. You can’t go wrong with one of their pups.”

I looked around at the three possible fugitives and grimaced. “Are all of you seriously taking her side?”

They nodded as if they shared a single hive mind and Maggie smiled triumphantly. “Great. America is a democracy, after all, so there you have it.” She hugged the puppy closer and batted her lashes at me. “Just say yes, Ryan. Please?”

“No,” I said firmly and her smile instantly disappeared, making me feel like a sack of shit when I shook my head again, but this was the one time I was going to put my foot down and say no to her. “Maggie, just think about this. You don’t even know where you’re going to be living a month from now.”

Her face fell and she looked down at the puppy again when his giant paw landed on her wrist. My resolve almost collapsed on the spot, but instead, I crouched down in front of her. “Look, you’re a grown woman. If you want a puppy, get it, but if you actually go through with the wedding and send the invitations out again, I’ll deliver this one to you myself.”

She looked up at me again with hope brimming in her eyes. “Really?”

“Really.”

Her head cocked. “Do you promise?”

“I promise. Send out the invitations and I’ll come get him for you personally, but right now isn’t a good time and I think you know that.”

She paused for a beat before hugging the puppy one last time and then gently picking him up to return him to the pen. He started whining immediately as she set him down, a genuinely pained expression crossing her face as she cooed to him.

Meanwhile, I felt like the villain in a children’s movie, but I was serious about this. A dog was a major commitment and Maggie hadn’t being doing well with those lately. Plus, if I let her do this on a whim and either Daniel or Cliff took issue with it, I was going to get stuck with that monstrous thing and neither of my apartments was suitable for a dog that size.

Which meant that if we left here today with that puppy, I was looking at likely going house-hunting in the very near future. Still, when her eyes met mine again and I saw the disappointment shimmering in them, my heart sank.

“This is cruel, Ryan.”

“It’s practical,” I said, pushing back up to my feet. “He deserves space and stability, don’t you think?”

She looked at me like her mind had gone back to the same place mine suddenly had—last night and how neither of us felt stable this morning. Sure, we’d managed to stop before going any further, which was all well and fine, but it hadn’t been because we hadn’t wanted each other. And that was a problem.

A fucking big one.

I honestly didn’t care about Daniel in all this. As much as he was a good guy, he wasn’t invested in Maggie or their marriage. He’d do it if he had to but only because he had to.

Maggie, however, I cared about. I didn’t want her getting hurt. Even if protecting her meant eventually becoming the asshole who stopped whatever this was before it became something neither of us could control, but not today.

Today, she was so happy that she was glowing. I wasn’t going to ruin that. At the same time, however, I did want to ruin this wedding. Which brings me full circle to our current extreme lack of stability. No puppy deserves to get dropped into the shit-show that is either of lives right now.

At the end of the day, I knew how arranged marriages worked and the fact that they weren’t engaged didn’t mean she wouldn’t marry Daniel eventually. Maybe she thought this little scheme she was running would buy her more time to get out of it, but it wouldn’t work.

In the end, whether it was at this crazy wedding or not, they would get married. I just didn’t want to be reasonable about it anymore. I didn’t want to deliver her to another man and I definitely didn’t want to watch her walk down the aisle toward anyone else.

Not at all.

CHAPTER 30

MAGGIE

Ryan had been in his head ever since we’d left the carnival. On the drive back to the cottage, he’d hardly said a word, and once we walked in, he went to sit on the edge of the sofa with his phone in one hand, just turning it over and over instead of actually even unlocking it.

I watched him for a minute from the kitchen, wondering what was going on in his head, but instead of pushing, I decided to make him dinner. At some point, that had become my solution to emotional distress, one of the few things I could do without anyone telling me what I should’ve been doing instead.

Besides, Ryan had been running himself ragged trying to keep up with work while arranging the most ridiculous wedding in the history of weddings just because I’d asked him to. The least I could do was feed the man.

While he was distracted, I grabbed his keys from the counter and strode to the door. “I’m popping into town for groceries.”

He barely glanced up. “You’ll be okay on your own?”

“Of course. I’ll be back in twenty, but text me if you need anything.”