His Runaway Bride (Alphalicious Billionaires Book 7)

by Lindsey Hart

  HIS

  RUNAWAY

  BRIDE

  Alphalicious Billionaires

  Lindsey Hart

  CONTENTS

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LIST OF BOOKS

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  I’ve never seen, forget even met the guy but I’m supposed to marry him?

  Hell no.

  I’m not getting hitched to a rich jerk just so the merger of the century can happen.

  So, I ran.

  But what was even worse than running away was meeting a sexy hot stranger and asking him to taste me there like he would a waffle.

  Forget the kind little heiress. This new rebellious me is up for her first no strings attached, one nightstand.

  And my delicious stranger is just perfect to fulfill my scorching hot fantasies.

  It’s not like I would ever meet him again.

  Right?

  Byron

  I never thought I would be spending my day chasing my fiancée all the way across the country.

  And I definitely did not expect her to ask me to take a look at her cherry…

  But I was happy to oblige.

  She will be my wife anyway … even though she has no idea just yet.

  Hey Loves, come meet those sexy men loaded with more than just that cash package and so ready to claim their not-so-reluctant heroine.

  The Alphalicious Billionaires series:

  - Married by Mistake

  - Faking It

  - Baby Mistake

  - Seducing My Best Friend

  - The Dating Game

  - Claiming Her V-Card

  - His Runaway Bride

  Can be read in any order.

  COPYRIGHT

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted by email without permission in writing from the publisher. While all attempts and efforts have been made to verify the information held within this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or opposing interpretations of the content herein. The book is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the author alone and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands.

  Copyright © Passion House Publishing Ltd 2019

  All rights reserved.

  You can contact the team at team@passionhousepublishing.com.

  CHAPTER 1

  Byron

  Get a fiancé, they said. It will be fun, they said. Yeah. Freaking. Right.

  If it wasn’t for Byron’s fiancé, he wouldn’t be out stumbling around in Sunrise, a sleepy little resort town despite its ridiculously perky name, population six thousand, looking for a needle in a haystack. Human version. Maybe it would be easier if he knew what his fiancé liked, but as it was, he’d never met her. He left New York, armed with two pictures, both of which he’d printed from the few he could find online from charity dinners and galas over the years.

  He was so screwed.

  He was also bastard of the century.

  Who agreed to get married just so that one of the largest mergers in the fashion industry could happen? Oh right. That would be yours truly.

  He was one thousand, eight hundred, and nineteen miles from his condo in New York. Of course, it was a penthouse suite. He was, after all, the classic villain of their story. The guy whose father made it big designing and selling shoes. The son who not just carried on the legacy, turning his father’s multi-million dollar company into a multi-billion dollar national name, but would do anything to reach true greatness. Even if he had to grasp and beg and marry his way there.

  At least that’s what a few of the headlines said about him.

  Byron had no idea who leaked the merger details before the damn thing even happened, but if he ever found out who it was, he promised himself he’d put their head on a stiletto spike. Not really, but it had a nice ring to it. What he would do is find the bastard and make sure they never worked in the city or State of New York again. He might not even stop at that. Maybe he’d make his desire for revenge global.

  Forgiveness wasn’t exactly in his nature.

  Apparently, neither was marriage.

  He ground his teeth in frustration, stopping on the sidewalk and letting out a stream of profanity sure to rival the dirtiest of foul mouths. His mother would have frowned at him if she was still alive. She’d swat him with a fly swatter since that was her favorite weapon of choice and tell him that she was going to wash his mouth out with soap, even though he was thirty-three.

  Despite his billions, he knew that he was shit for marriage. He never expected that he’d actually do the wife, kids, white picket fence thingy. He didn’t want a dog or a cat or a new car in the driveway. He had plenty of cars. And a hell of a lot more than a fence. He was living the dream. Uber rich and very nearly morally bankrupt. What more could a guy ask for?

  Daniel De’Luco thought he could ask for a hell of a lot more. Thought he was good for more than just sticking his dick into random chicks every other night of the week. Maybe that was exaggerating slightly. It was more like three times a week.

  Daniel De’Luco, owner of one of the biggest European shoe lines.

  Daniel De’Luco, Byron’s future father-in-law.

  Except that was never going to happen if he couldn’t find the guy’s MIA daughter. After hearing about her father’s plans to marry her off, she’d run. The guy lived in New York, but no. She couldn’t just try and disappear into the city. She had to jump a plane and get her ass to some shit hole resort style town, in the summer. Who the hell went to Colorado in the summer?

  Noemi De’Luco. That’s who.

  Thanks to the GPS tracker her father had on the phone, Byron knew where she was. The hard part? Finding her. De’Luco only gave him the name of the town and told him to work his magic like he worked it selling shoes. Decoded: work hard at winning my daughter like you worked hard at becoming obscenely rich.

  De’Luco actually thought a marriage between them could work. That it could be real. That it could actually mean something. It was such complete and utter nonsense that Byron wanted to laugh at it. Except it wasn’t funny.

  It wasn’t funny at all.

  Him standing in the middle of the street, just after eight in the morning, ruining an expensive suit by cooking alive in it while tourists swirled around him like a mindless human river.

  God, he hated being out of the city. Always had. Always would. He was born in New York. He’d die in New York and he’d spend as much time in between those milestones as he could there.

  But he needed Noemi De’Luco if he wanted to take his brand global. And he damn well did. He’d tried. Tried and failed to break into that market. It turned out that many Europeans weren’t keen on wearing a brand made pop
ular in America, no matter how much research and planning he’d done. He needed the De’Luco name. And he needed it yesterday.

  Which left him right in the middle of a row of cutesy, godforsaken little shops with stone fronts and colorful signs. Tourist traps. One of them had a sign in the window announcing that they carried Sol Gen. Great. He felt far more at home knowing that his shoes made it all the way out here into the middle of butt fucking nowhere.

  He’d renamed the company after he took over. Shortened the name until it was a clever play on words that wasn’t a mouthful and didn’t include his last name. Morgan’s Soles & Genesis Footwear just didn’t have the same ring.

  Mostly because unless it was the flavor of the week or a close member of his company or the guy he bought insurance from, people didn’t give a shit who he was. His name didn’t matter. What mattered was the shoe itself, a fast-flowing name and a killer logo.

  No, his name really didn’t mean shit. Except to Noemi. She’d decided that she hated his name enough, his last name, and likely his first as well, that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. She’d risk disappearing into some mundane existence, leave the comforters of her own home, leave the safety of everyone around her, give up all her precious charities, just to avoid marriage with him.

  Byron hunched his shoulders and eyed the shitty looking coffee shop across the street. A bunch of hipster wannabe, wasted generation style kids sat outside at brightly colored, mismatched bistro sets, sipping on eight dollar coffees instead of actually getting off their duffs and doing something with their lives. One of them even had a man bun. Fuck, he wanted to cut that thing off almost as much as he wanted to go stabby style on whoever leaked the merger. Was it possible to shear a bun off with a shoe? Fuck, he wished. Maybe he should design something with hidden blades…

  It was early. He’d caught the red-eye from New York and rented a car. A shitty sedan so he’d blend in. Be like everyone else. Except he didn’t blend in. He didn’t look like everyone else. He’d have to lose the suit. And actually force himself to enter the wretched shops on the street to ask if anyone had seen his fiancé.

  And right.

  No women.

  He was supposed to be engaged.

  Didn’t matter that De’Luco had just broken the news to his daughter two days ago. Or that it still wasn’t public knowledge. Didn’t matter that she didn’t have a ring or that the only things they knew about each other were what they’d read online. It. Didn’t. Matter.

  He was engaged and life as he knew it was pretty much over. He wouldn’t get lucky and be able to have one of those open marriages. De’Luco wanted it to be the real deal. He wanted it so badly that he’d made the merger conditional on their marriage. He was willing to force his daughter into a loveless union. He was that desperate for it.

  Except life wasn’t a fairy tale and shit didn’t work out just like in books. No one got a happy ending. No one fell magically in love after that ring was in place. In Byron’s experience, once those rings got slipped on, it signaled the death of love, not the birth of it. He could count on one hand the number of marriages he knew where the people in them were actually happy. And he knew a lot of married people.

  De’Luco hadn’t said divorce wasn’t an option, though, and being a smart guy, Byron had done some research and come up with a proposal.

  He just had to find his fiancé and get her to agree to it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Noemi

  Noemi De’Luco was pretty sure that her fiancé was the devil. Not that he was her real fiancé. She’d fixed that by taking off. There was no way she was going to marry a man who she’d only ever seen once, in the grainy picture her dad provided, printed off some internet site.

  The picture was black and white and grainy, and she hadn’t bothered to do any further research. Her dad, who she thought treasured her and wanted the best for her, who actually wanted her to have a loving marriage and a beautiful future, informed her that she was going to marry some rich stranger who was no doubt a pig and a bastard who wanted something from their family, as all men she’d ever known did, and she was done.

  She’d hung around for approximately five seconds before scurrying off to her room to pack a suitcase. She waited until her dad was asleep and he never bothered to check on her, wanting to do the nice thing and give her space. Which was a load of crap, given that he’d demanded she marry a complete stranger like it was eighteen fricking hundred and she was chattel to be handed off to the highest bidder. She’d waited a couple of hours after he turned in for the night before she snuck out. She called for a cab and arrived at the airport with no destination in mind. She just wanted to be far away from New York. She’d never liked it much anyway. She missed their home in Italy but after her mother passed away, her dad couldn’t stand to be there, like even the country reminded him too much of her and he couldn’t bear it.

  He said the move was for business, but Noemi knew better. The move was a fresh start. A place her father could nurse his wounded heart in peace.

  “Yo? Lady? You gonna pay for that coffee or just stand there staring off into space? Last time I checked, aliens aren’t crashing in from the ceiling…”

  It turned out that rude asshole baristas weren’t exclusive to New York.

  Noemi dug in her pocket and produced a twenty. She thumped it down on the counter and watched while the snobby barista in front of her- the guy had a nose piercing, one of those bull ring things that stuck out of the middle and didn’t look at all sanitary. He also had a scraggly beard and a man bun to match, which also didn’t seem to be exclusive to New York. The guy probably had never spent a day outside in his life, but she was willing to bet he owned at least ten different shades of plaid and six different colors of skinny jeans and that his social media pages proclaimed him to be a wildlife enthusiast who enjoyed leisurely trails through the woods.

  Then again, this was Colorado, so maybe the guy was for real and not just the online, keyboard type hipster that was so common in New York.

  “Here’s your change.” Change was emphasized and Noemi realized that she’d spaced out again. The dude was staring at her like she’d just sprouted an apiary from her forehead and the birds inside were currently squabbling and squawking over who had dibs on the tastiest worm for lunch.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, tucking the bills away in her pocket. Not enough bills to justify leaving a tip for the shitty service or the overpriced six-dollar latte.

  Noemi settled near the back of the small shop. The tables were black metal and so were the chairs. They were uncomfortable, yet she’d spent an hour and a half in them the day before. She wasn’t a creature of habit and she didn’t really even like coffee or coffee shops that much, with their artsy décor and their customers madly pounding away on their laptops to look important or scrolling their phones mindlessly, but for some reason, she was back.

  Oh right. That reason was probably because she had no freaking clue what she was supposed to do with herself at the moment.

  Where exactly does a person go after they’ve been told they’re being forced into a marriage with a stranger and after running across the country with a spooked, deer in the headlights look?

  Work. Accommodations. Noemi decided she could start there. If she wanted to stay. Even with its snobby vibe, the resort town was probably as good as anywhere, and it was close to Boulder and close enough to Denver after that, for anything else she needed. She should probably, after drinking her latte, go back to her hotel room and work on finding a place that didn’t cost over a hundred dollars a night to lay her head. Finding a job would be the next pressing item on the agenda.

  Noemi sighed. She pulled out her phone. It was new. Before leaving New York, she’d given her old one a dip in the bathtub. She’d also called and canceled all her credit cards but the one she knew she’d need to book a hotel room. It couldn’t be helped, but she hoped it left less of a paper trail reducing the amount she used. Other than that, she kept
to using cash.

  Honestly, she wanted a fresh start, not a fresh identity. She didn’t want to give up on her father. He was pretty much the only family she had left. She loved him. She just wanted a breather, and she sure as hell didn’t want to sign her life away married to some billionaire asshole who just wanted another trophy on his mantle and would likely just as easily have married her father, had that been the demand on the table, just to secure his business.

  Living in New York left her with a keen sense for people. There were people everywhere. She didn’t think a person could ever truly be alone there. She also had never been overly shy. Her father used to bemoan her lack of stranger danger when she was a kid. Not that he called it that. He called her reckless and careless, but… same difference, right?

  Her head cranked up when she sensed, more than saw, someone staring at her. The weight of his gaze burned into her like the sun on a hot, cloudless day. The guy sat there, staring at her from the other side of the shop. When she glanced up, he looked back down at his paper cup, but it was like the sun, even blocked by an unexpected cloud, still had the power to burn her.

  Well, two could play at the Peeping Tom game.

  Noemi let her gaze linger over the stranger’s bent head of tousled dark hair. It was weeks past needing a cut and shaggy, hanging lower over his forehead, likely even when his head wasn’t bent, but maybe he preferred it that way. He, like the rest of the male population in town, seemed to prefer plaid. He had the usual red and black variety on, adorning the broadest set of shoulders she’d ever seen. Just above the table, the arch of that broad chest narrowed to a trim waist, but that was all she could see.

  His hands. His hands were on the tabletop, so she took a second to study those too. Broad, bronzed hands with blunt square nails. Both hands were twined around the cup, like it was just there for moral support and he didn’t actually want to drink the six-dollar swill the shop served up. He reminded her of the lumberjacks on posters of old. Broad. Dark. Dangerous. Before he’d ducked his head, she got a glimpse of a square, hard set jaw, a wide brow and high cheekbones that he probably got made fun of for all the time. That strong jaw had a dusting of dark stubble that only added to the allure. And his eyes? The eyes that burned a hole right through her? They were the lightest blue she’d ever seen, impossible to describe, as they weren’t ice and they weren’t sky.