His Runaway Bride (Alphalicious Billionaires Book 7)

by Lindsey Hart

  They were totally otherworldly.

  Unfortunately, he was probably singlehandedly the most beautiful male specimen she’d ever had the pleasure of looking at, and that was saying a lot, considering she lived in New York and there was no shortage of men to gawk at.

  Her eyes scanned the man’s hands again, searching for a wedding ring but there wasn’t one, though that really didn’t mean anything. For a split, crazy second, she debated about getting up and sitting down across from the guy and proposing marriage, just so her fiancé couldn’t marry her and get his way. Just to spit her father.

  Okay, time to go.

  She nearly laughed at herself for being so ridiculous. She was obviously jetlagged and overtired, her emotions near breaking point because thoughts like that were way the hell inappropriate. It was thoughts like that, her father’s thoughts- that got her into her whole current mess in the first place.

  Noemi gathered up her phone, slipping it into the back pocket of her ripped jeans, scooped up her purse and grabbed her latte, even though she didn’t really want to drink it. She made a beeline straight for the door, just to escape the suddenly overwarm, closed-in feeling inside the little shop. She had no idea how she was going to kill the rest of the day but maybe sitting in front of her laptop trying to figure out how to re-start her life would be the best course of action.

  She didn’t look at the stranger as she passed by him. She didn’t need to. His image was imprinted into her brain. He was gorgeous, in that rugged, wild animal, brutal sort of way. It was always the gorgeous ones that a person had to watch out for. They were the most dangerous.

  They were the kind of men who were used to just existing and having women fall into a gooey pile all over their boots to worship them. Okay, well- maybe they wouldn’t be worshipping the boots. Probably other choice anatomy which she was never going to let herself think about.

  Noemi had never been so thankful to see her rental in her life. She slipped in and hesitated for just a second before she slipped the key in the ignition.

  Her chest burned strangely, and her stomach felt like she’d just swallowed an angry hive of buzzing bees and she was no bear, so that shit was hard to digest. What the heck is wrong with me? Oh right. I haven’t slept properly in days. I just fled across the country. My life is a complete shit storm with full-on torrential shit rain, shit thunder, and shit lightning.

  Instead of sitting in her car and giving in to the pity party of the century, she slipped out into traffic, determined to shut herself into her hotel room and not emerge until she’d figured out at least the most pressing of her problem. Home. Job.

  She had to hold out hope that the rest of her life, or what was left of the tattered remains of it, would fall into place after that.

  CHAPTER 3

  Byron

  Sometimes having a fairly pretty face helped.

  Not Noemi. He wasn’t talking about her. He was talking about himself and how he’d shamelessly charmed the female barista at the coffee shop the day before into giving him some information about the woman in the picture he slid across the counter.

  She’d told him that the unnamed woman had been in there the day before. That she was polite and sat down for a few hours. She looked like a tourist who would be back. That was literally what the girl, who was probably all of nineteen or twenty, told him. She’d batted her eyelashes at him like he wasn’t the world’s biggest creeper asking info on a woman in a grainy black and white print out from the internet and told him his coffee was on her- implying that she’d also like to mean that literally, and that he’d sit there and lap it off of her.

  What the fuck was wrong with the world?

  Normally that kind of mindless interaction would just annoy him but after he’d spent the rest of the day getting zero leads, it was the one thing that turned into anything. He’d hovered around the coffee shop all morning, until bam!

  There she was. Of course, he hadn’t been obvious about it. He’d stood in the alley and waited until Noemi went inside the shop before he discreetly followed her in. She hadn’t noticed when he’d ordered behind her and taken a seat to watch her. She seemed to be in her own little world.

  Even when she caught him staring straight at her, there had been no flicker of recognition in those eyes. No panic. Nothing. He’d waited a minute, with his head lowered, heart racing, sure she’d run out into the street and he’d had to full-on tackle her, which would probably earn him a good pepper spraying from nearby bystanders when she screamed bloody fucking murder about it. But she hadn’t done anything.

  She didn’t recognize him.

  Not in the plaid and the jeans he’d bought the day before so he didn’t stand out like a rich bastard, sore thumb. She didn’t recognize his face, which meant that she probably hadn’t cared enough to even look him up when her father dumped the news on her. Maybe it wasn’t him exactly that she objected to.

  Either way, he was going to find out. He was going to do a hell of a lot more than that, he just wasn’t sure what.

  Even though it took all of his self-control not to run out into the street after Noemi when she gathered up her shit and walked out of the shop, he waited a few seconds before tailing a good distance behind her. He watched her get into a black rental and noted the plate number. He had one of those minds that could store random, useless information for days.

  He’d hurtled into his own car, intent on following her, but he was no fucking PI and when she braked suddenly at a stop sign in front of her like she didn’t even realize it was there, he made a split second decision that probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world.

  And drove his car right up her car’s ass.

  Just a little. Just hard enough to bump her rental forward a few feet past the stop sign. Not hard enough to hurt or even leave a scratch on the car, but the car’s brake lights flashed and a second later, Noemi stumbled out, her eyes wide, her face infused with panic, her lips pulled into a round O of surprise.

  Byron slammed his car into park and killed the ignition. Showtime.

  He wasn’t exactly improved champion of the year, but Noemi saved him having to say anything at all.

  “Oh my god,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry. I- I wasn’t paying- I almost missed the sign. I’m- oh god. I’ve never been in an accident before. I’m sorry. Er- I- I don’t…” her eyes met his, impossibly wide, insanely dark, and full of alarm.

  Fuck. Me. She was hands down the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Long blonde hair that trailed to her waist, a petite little body with just enough curves to tempt even the most devout- and he was far from that- into sinning, lush lips, flawless skin, dark doe eyes and the thickest lashes on the planet. He’d realized in the coffee shop that she was pretty, but now, with a little splash of color riding high on those sharp cheekbones, and her lips opened at just the right come hither angle that made his cock want to start writing a Christmas list of dirty desires six months early, she was edible.

  She stared at him for a second and recognition washed over her features. “You,” she breathed.

  “Me.” He tensed, waiting. Waiting for her to call him out, but instead, her throat bobbed when she swallowed.

  “The guy from the coffee shop.”

  “Yeah.” He brushed a hand through his hair, ruffling it, because he knew women fucking loved when he did that shit. He had to confess that he knew how to play all his cards when he wanted to, and nature had given him a pretty damn good hand. “Sorry. I had to get to work. Was in a bit of a hurry too. Probably didn’t leave a safe gap.”

  Right on cue, Noemi’s eyes filled up with tears. She twisted her hands in front of her while she worried her lip with her top teeth. It made him want to sink his teeth there and bite her hard until she screamed. Were her nails sharp enough to break through his skin if she clawed his back? His cock really wanted to find out. Okay, maybe his balls were in on that desire too.

  He was just damn thankful that Noemi was distracted with her car and was
n’t looking down at the huge bulge in his jeans that he couldn’t exactly adjust because the damn thing was way too tight. He’d thought they were uncomfortable even before his cock swelled to epic proportions.

  Time to dial up the charm. “Please don’t do that,” he said in his most soothing voice. “Don’t cry. It’s fine. Your car is fine. My car is fine. There isn’t even a scratch. We don’t even have to exchange info.” He paused, letting that sink in but Noemi played right into his hands and burst into big, wet, noisy sobs.

  Yeah. She went into what teenage girls liked to define on the innerweb as full on ugly crying.

  Big wet tears roll down Noemi’s cheeks even though she balled her hands into fists and pressed them into her eyes to try and staunch the flow. They kept on coming. Her shoulders heaved with shuddery sobs and her nostrils flared.

  “H-hey…” Her bursting into tears and needing a shoulder to cry on might play right into his nefarious cards but god, he was shit at trying to comfort women when it came to tears. Byron reached out and gently set his fingers- just the fingers, not his hand- on her shoulder so that she didn’t get the wrong idea. “You look like you could use a friend.”

  Noemi swiped hard at her eyes like she was furious with herself for giving in to the temptation to cry. “W-what makes you think that?” She stared back at him with watery, red-rimmed eyes.

  He couldn’t help but notice a stray trail of snot leaking from her left nostril. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him because while he obviously didn’t find it attractive, he wasn’t exactly disgusted either.

  “I don’t know. You might have a lost look about you. And you’re crying over a tiny tap at a stop sign when neither car is damaged. Crying like there might be a meteor speeding towards earth, about to strike at any second but…” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “Last time I checked, there weren’t any reports about world-ending space catastrophes, so it must be something else.” He slowly raised a brow while Noemi sniffed. “Want to talk about it? There’s a nice place down the street that has good breakfast specials.”

  To his surprise, Noemi swiped at her eyes one more time and let out a tiny laugh, but it was genuine. “No thanks. I think the universe has an unspoken rule about spilling depressing life stuff with strangers.”

  Byron shrugged. He dug the toe of his newly purchased black industrial-looking boot into the dirt. The things were uncomfortable as hell, but when it came to stores in a resort town, hiking boots and riding boots were pretty much the only options, just like plaid seemed to be the town’s unofficial uniform of choice.

  “I seriously don’t mind. You are new to town? I don’t remember seeing you before.”

  “Yeah,” Noemi admitted, too easily. She was far too nice, and it could get her into trouble. “I am actually. I- I don’t know anyone here. The move- it’s been- everything… it’s been overwhelming. Sorry. I didn’t mean to stand here and break down like a bawl bag. You must think I’m crazy.”

  “Nope.” What he thought was that there was something wrong with his stomach because when he thought about Noemi racing halfway across the country, bawling in the street on the verge of a meltdown, and her being far too trusting with strange men, something in his lower belly cramped hard. It felt a little like he’d just tried to digest an old leather boot. “I don’t think you’re crazy. Life just gets hard sometimes. Please. Let me take you for breakfast. I don’t know of anything that a good stack of waffles with whipped cream and berries couldn’t fix.”

  He hated whipped cream and he had no idea if the diner he’d spotted the day before with the black and white checkered canopy and the flashing old school lights lining a sign that proclaimed they did all day breakfast, actually had waffles, but it was resort town for god sakes and he was willing to bet a fifties looking diner probably had something close. Just to be safe, he tacked on another version of temptation.

  “Or a milkshake? Greasy fries with thick gravy that will be sure to clog your arteries?”

  Noemi flashed him a small, watery smile, but it was the kind of smile that had the power to wrench a man’s heart from his chest. Even a man who was generally, as a rule, fairly immune to female attention. He’d experienced enough of it over the course of his life that hook-ups had become little more than something mechanical and flirting actually annoyed the hell out of him.

  Noemi wasn’t flirting though. She was just smiling, trying to be friendly.

  He sensed her defeat looming and pressed on. “Please. I rear-ended you. You look like you could use a cup of coffee at the very least.”

  “I actually have a latte in the car.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t drink that. The stuff that place makes is bad.”

  One perfectly manicured, dark brow rose a little higher than the other. “Why were you drinking it then?”

  “Uh- well- it’s close to my place,” he lied, thinking on the spot. “It might be terrible, but it will do in a pinch.”

  “Are you- don’t you have someplace to be? I mean, it’s the middle of the day.”

  Shit. He was a terrible PI or whatever he was playing at. He might have found her, but he had zero plans about how he was actually going to get her home. Maybe, if he could convince her that he wasn’t a terrible guy, they could come to some kind of understanding that involved them both getting something that they wanted. Namely, a divorce a few years down the road and a hell of a lot of fake shit before that, but in the end, he’d come up with something that made them both happy.

  He just had to a) find out what made her tick and b) exploit the hell out of that. So far, he seemed to be having a good start, even though he was just flying by the seat of his far too tight, far too uncomfortable, ball pinching, cock squishing jeans.

  “I- I work from home. I- yeah. I can do it later. Don’t worry. I can spare an hour for something to eat.”

  “So, you went down to a coffee shop to get horrible tasting coffee which you don’t like, and you are no longer in a hurry to get back to work which is home?” Noemi’s beautiful black eyes narrowed. They were the kind of raven black, so dark that you couldn’t distinguish between iris and pupil. They were almost otherworldly, and they were like a punch straight to his groin.

  “Yup.” He nodded. “That’s pretty much bang on.” He raised his fake cup of coffee into the air in a mock salute. “Living the American Dream right here.” He chuckled, dark and low in his throat, because he also knew women liked that half laugh-half growl. Noemi’s eyes narrowed a little further. “In all honesty, I ran out of coffee at home. The thing about working from home is that you don’t have a regular routine and you sometimes forget to eat and that includes getting groceries, or sometimes you just forget to get groceries so there is nothing to eat. Other times, you do get groceries, but you forget the one thing you went for, which was coffee, so you have to go down to a place you hate and drink their swill until you get your butt motivated to go back to the grocery store to probably forget the coffee all over again.”

  That worked. Noemi cracked a smile.

  “We might be blocking the street soon.” He wanted to push her over the edge, into agreeing with him. It didn’t matter that what little traffic there was drove around their two cars easily.

  “Oh!” Noemi’s eyes widened again. She glanced around rapidly. “I-alright. I give in. I could use something deep fried and greasy and a triple thick milkshake, so I hope they have those.”

  “You’re in luck.” God, he hoped they had them too.

  He quoted the name of the place, and gave Noemi brief directions, thanking his photographic memory for pulling that shit out of his ass at the last second. He let her drive off first. When he was sure she was a good few blocks ahead, he pulled out. He’d park his car down the street from the diner and walk. He couldn’t chance Noemi realizing that his car, just like hers, was also a rental.

  He might be a fast thinker, but he wasn’t that swift. He couldn’t lose whatever shot he had, even if it was a wild shot in the d
ark that would probably just end up with him getting maced or kicked hard enough in the crotch that his ability to have children would be in serious question.

  Oh. Fucking. Well.

  He never saw himself as a father anyway.

  CHAPTER 4

  Noemi

  “So…” Noemi folded her hands on the table. The only thing more awkward than just basically causing an accident, even though she was the one who technically got hit by him, was sitting across from a complete stranger after having a breakdown in front of him. It felt weird to make small talk to someone who had literally just seen snot dribbling down her face. “What brings you here?”

  The stranger smiled at her, revealing a row of perfect white teeth on top, but the bottoms, there were two teeth that were just slightly crooked, and she found it disarming and completely adorable that the rest of him might be utter rugged perfection but that one tiny flaw made him human.

  “Here?” One dark brow rose, almost to the swatch of dark hair that shadowed his forehead.

  God, does he have to be so- so good looking? Even her thoughts stutter stepped. She wished the service was faster in the diner, just so she didn’t have to be left alone to turn into a puddle of melted goo on the other side of the table, but that was a no go. Though they were the only people in the diner at the moment, apparently the servers had other pressing matters to attend to. #Frickingresorttowns.