Runaway Groom

by Lauren Layne

  Runaway Groom is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Layne

  Excerpt from An Ex for Christmas by Lauren Layne copyright © 2018 by Lauren LeDonne

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book An Ex for Christmas by Lauren Layne. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Ebook ISBN 9781101885123

  Cover design: Okay Creations

  Cover photograph: chaoss/Shutterstock

  randomhousebooks.com

  v5.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Gage

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Gage

  Gage

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Gage

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Ellie

  Gage

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Lauren Layne

  About the Author

  Excerpt from An Ex for Christmas

  Gage

  There are a lot of ways to find out that your best friend’s a total dick.

  My way’s landed me in a makeup chair, preparing to have twenty-five women paraded in front of me on national television.

  Sounds great, right?

  Oh, did I mention that I’m supposed to marry one of them?

  “Tell me you found a way out of it,” I growl into the phone.

  Diana taps her finger against the back of my hand, our shorthand developed over the years for Switch your phone to the other ear.

  Without missing a beat, I move the phone to my right ear, and Diana begins dabbing some beige goop beneath my left eye.

  She makes a tsking noise that I know means she’s irritated by darker-than-usual under-eye circles. She’ll just have to deal. She’d have bags under her eyes too if her life was about to turn into a damned circus.

  “I’ve been over it a thousand times,” my agent says over the phone. “The contract’s ironclad.”

  I lift a hand to rub my forehead, but Diana bats it away so I don’t ruin her handiwork. I settle for clenching my fist and wishing I were somewhere else—somewhere other than an uncomfortable chair in CBC’s Los Angeles studio, preparing to become the star of a new reality TV show’s debut season.

  It’s a dubious honor, to say the least. I’m no stranger to being on camera, but this is different. This isn’t stepping into the shoes of a fictional character; this is me as myself.

  Or the version of myself everyone wants to see.

  Here’s the shit I got myself into: I lost a bet. Three months ago I was in Vegas with my “best friend,” and yes, I’m air-quoting that shit. I was having a hell of a run at the tables—couldn’t lose.

  Things were going great until Wes Carver, the Pitt to my Clooney, whatever, decided that a shit-ton of money didn’t make for an interesting enough wager. And because I’ve never been good at turning down a challenge, I agreed.

  Wes put his Tesla on the line. My idea. Me? I’d gambled with my damned dignity—if I lost, I’d agree to sign the contract for Jilted. His idea.

  I fucking lost.

  And don’t tell me not to be a diva, because I haven’t even told you what Jilted is. Think The Bachelor, but so much worse, at least for me.

  I’m playing the part of not just any old bachelor but the Runaway Groom—someone with a reputation for leaving women at the altar.

  Yes, technically I qualify. But I have my reasons, none of which I look forward to having to explain on national television.

  That’s not even the worst part of the show. In The Bachelor, the poor guy has until the end of the show to decide if he’s going to propose to one of the women he met. But Jilted doesn’t end in a maybe proposal.

  It ends in a maybe wedding.

  Yes, you read that right. Four weeks from now, I’m expected to slip a ring on some woman’s finger. But not an engagement ring. A wedding ring.

  Just kill me.

  “Told you not to sign it,” Dan says. I can hear him smacking his ever-present gum.

  My fist clenches tighter, because he’s right and it’s annoying. I lost that fucking bet, but instead of letting common sense take over, my pride kicked in hard.

  Wes, gloating, had expected me to back out. Don’t worry about it, Barrett. Commitment’s not your thing, it’s cool.

  It’s not cool. And it pisses me off that the guy who I thought knew me as well as anyone doesn’t get it. Playing the part of the charming but worthless playboy for the public is one thing. Having the people in my real life believe it—well, that sucks.

  “Think of it like a free vacation with a bunch of hot girls,” my agent says, his words punctuated with the sound of a car horn. Probably his.

  I bite my tongue before I say I don’t need a free vacation—nor am I wanting for female company when I’m in the mood.

  A woman with ink-black hair who’s wearing black stilettos and a black dress marches toward me, iPad in hand. “Gage, we’re ready for you.”

  Shit. She’s one of the producers of the show and I’ve already forgotten her name.

  “Raven,” she says with a small smile, reading my blank expression.

  Raven. Right. I wonder if the all-black attire is a deliberate nod to the name, or a side effect of being from New York.

  “I need another minute,” Diana says, opening a compact and coming at me with a brush.

  I gently grab her wrist. “What the hell is that?”

  “Powder.”

  “No. You know the deal. Bare minimum of makeup.”

  She gives an impatient huff. “And usually that’s fine, with your freaking Greek-god skin. Today, though, you look like hell.”

  Raven’s gaze rakes over me in an impartial inspection, apparently not impressed that I was voted Sexiest Man Alive last year. And the year before that.

  “He’s good enough,” Raven says. “I need him for sound check.”

  Diana nods, but not before she sneaks in a quick swipe of powder over my cheekbones.

  Raven crooks a finger at me and saunters away, clearly expecting me to follow.

  I jerk out the bib-like thing that prevents the makeup from getting on my white dress shirt. “I gotta go,” I say to Dan.

  I’m talking to silence. He’s already hung up.

  “What’s with you today?” Diana asks, putting her tools back in her kit. “You look like shit. You’re in a shitty mood.”

  “You talk to your girlfriend with that mouth?” I say with a smile, trying to lighten the atmosphere as an apology for taking my shitty mood out on her.

  “Yes, and Christina likes it,” Diana says with a wink as she clicks the case shut.

  She reaches out and touches a h
and to my arm, her blue eyes going slightly soft, a stark contrast to the three piercings in each eyebrow and the thick line of black around her eyes. “What’s going on, for real? You that pissed about the show?”

  I rub a hand over the back of my neck as I stand. “Sure. Yeah.”

  A lie. I mean, yeah, the fact that I’m about to speed-date twenty-five women sucks. But it’s that combined with the message from my brother four days ago.

  I’m an uncle.

  Jesus.

  They didn’t even tell me Layla was pregnant, but she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Clara.

  I knew the name even before my brother told me. Layla’s always loved the name, always said that it would be the name of her first daughter.

  The daughter I thought would also be mine.

  “Barrett!”

  I glance over my shoulder and see Raven giving me an impatient, get the hell over here look.

  “I like her,” Diana says, patting my shoulder. “She doesn’t coddle the talent.”

  “Shut up,” I mutter. Then I kiss her cheek to soften the blow. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Definitely. Try to get some sleep. I’m a good makeup artist, but not a friggin’ magician. If those circles under your eyes get any darker…”

  I lift a hand to acknowledge her protest as I make my way toward scowling Raven and the rest of the crew.

  A quick scan shows that the female contestants are still being kept somewhere else. There’s been a lot of talk about the “surprise factor”—they want my first sight of these women to be captured on camera. As though I’m going to lock eyes with one and just fall all over myself. Because that’s what grown men who are trained actors do—wear their fucking heart on their sleeve.

  Today’s the preliminary elimination round. It works like this. I sit here in a fancy Beverly Hills hotel lobby, sipping a drink, while they parade a shit-ton of hot, semi-sane women in front of me.

  There are twenty-five in total, but only twenty of them will be going with me to Maui on Friday, when the real show kicks off.

  The worst part—which is saying something, considering this whole thing’s a nightmare—is that I don’t even get to choose which twenty. The preliminary round is the “viewer participation round.” The show will air tonight, and over the next three days, the viewers get to vote on which five get eliminated.

  Yes, you read that right. A bunch of women sitting on their couch with chardonnay and reduced-fat Oreos get input on my future wife.

  I’m told I get a veto, but considering I can spend only two minutes with each woman, I don’t know that it even matters. How the hell am I supposed to know in two minutes which woman might be “the one”?

  “You ready for this?” Raven asks.

  I give her a look, and she surprises me by giving me a smile of commiseration. “It’ll be better than you think.”

  I think of my brother and Layla and their new baby, and I shrug.

  Maybe she’s right.

  It sure as hell can’t be worse than my life as it is now.

  Ellie

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Of course you can. You can do anything.”

  I’d roll my eyes at the quintessential mom comment, but my stomach’s too busy doing the rolling.

  “No, like for real…I don’t think I can make myself go out there.” I take a sip of flavored seltzer, hoping it’ll settle my stomach.

  “Ellie. Sweetie,” my mom coos into the phone. “He’ll love you. Everyone does.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Did you get some self-help book on mother/daughter relationships or something? You’re sounding very Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul.”

  “Marjorie told me you were freaking out. I wanted to be prepared.”

  I hear a rustle of paper and imagine a whole slew of motivational quotes in her messy handwriting.

  “Marjorie should be the one freaking out,” I mutter. “She got me into this situation.”

  “This situation,” of course, being the fact that any minute now the hammer will slam down on the final nail in my dignity’s coffin.

  I, Ellie Wright, resourceful, no-nonsense business owner, am about to become a contestant on Jilted, a ridiculous TV show in which I and twenty-four other women compete to be the bride of Gage Barrett.

  Gage Barrett, people.

  When I agreed to go to the audition it was with the assumption that it’d be some balding loser whose last chance of finding a future bride and baby mama was having a bunch of women literally delivered to him. In my wildest dream, I’d never imagined that the Runaway Groom to be “won” was the hottest name—and body—in Hollywood.

  Sorry, did I say wildest dream?

  I meant worst nightmare.

  I have about as much use for a diva actor as I do for a third tit.

  My only reason for doing this show in the first place is to rummage up some free publicity for my company, High Tee.

  And even that came only after a prosecco-fueled “brainstorming” session. I don’t think Marjorie (BFF and co-founder) or I ever thought I’d actually make it through the initial selection process.

  Yet here I am, expected to woo Gage Barrett in two minutes if I want to get to the Maui round.

  Which I’m not sure I do.

  “Did you decide on the black dress or the red?” Mom asks, as though that’s the pivotal question here.

  I glance down at my jeans and T-shirt. “Umm…”

  “Oh, honey, no. You’re wearing one of your T-shirts?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the whole reason I’m here,” I point out.

  High Tee is a luxury T-shirt company. I know, you’re thinking, Is there such a thing as a luxury T-shirt?

  Yes, there is. Don’t tell me you’ve never longed to rock chic jeans and a basic white tee, with the ensemble coming across as classic and not frumpy. It’s a timeless look that’s harder to achieve than people realize. The cut of most women’s T-shirts is either too tight or way too baggy.

  Marjorie and I found that the closest we used to be able to get to the “effortless cool” look was actually a men’s T-shirt, which tends to be longer and less fussy. But for women above an A-cup, men’s shirts run into a whole other problem, you get me?

  Enter High Tee—the perfect white tee.

  The company’s doing well—really well. But I want to do better than well. I want us to go from SoCal boutique to household name.

  The thing is, you can’t describe the perfect tee. You have to see it. And the reality-TV-obsessed Marjorie had the half-brilliant, half-crazy insight that there’s no better way to get our T-shirts in front of the almost entirely female demographic of the reality TV show Jilted than by having one of the contestants wear them. Factor in that I live in San Diego, which is just a couple of hours’ drive from the Los Angeles auditions for the show…and somehow I got talked into auditioning, since Marjorie herself is a happily married mother.

  Even more incredibly, I was selected.

  Marjorie thinks it was my “laid-back SoCal cool” that did it.

  I think it was the fact that I was one of the few noncrazies in the early stages. One woman carried her pet turtle strapped to her chest. Another woman was stressing about whether the producers would want to count her dual personalities as one contestant or two. Yet another woman rode a Segway everywhere because she had a fear of her feet touching the ground that “science had yet to cure.”

  Let’s just say my boring ponytail and T-shirt probably didn’t look irresistible so much as sane.

  But anyway, here I am. Currently in a side room of a Beverly Hills lobby, sweating through my T-shirt, trying not to puke, and talking to my mother, who, while lovable, is perhaps the least qualified person to offer advice on anything other than shades of coral nail polish.

  “What about shoes?” Mom asks. “Did you see that picture of the one with the plaid bows I sent you from Pinterest?”

  Case in point. The woman’s known me my ent
ire twenty-nine years, and she still thinks I like plaid. Or bows.

  Or that my shoes are anything other than flip-flops.

  “My shoes match my outfit perfectly,” I evade.

  She reads between the lines and sighs in disappointment—maybe she knows me better than I think.

  I hear the rustle of papers. “Well, none of that matters,” she says, obviously reciting from her notes, “because you have a…” Rustle rustle rustle. “Beguiling smile.”

  Clearly she has a new thesaurus app on the phone I got her for Christmas.

  “Okay, thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.” I hear a knock at the door—doom is officially around the corner. “I gotta run. Time to go beguile a man.”

  “Not just a man,” my mom says reverently. “Gage Barrett.”

  “Yes, my dream man. Unpredictable paychecks, more girlfriends in a week than I’ve had boyfriends in my life, two of which he’s left at the altar.”

  “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

  Oh, I’m sure he did too.

  Reason number one: he’s an asshole.

  Reason number two: he’s a playboy.

  Reason number three—

  The knock at the door is louder this time. “Twenty-one, you ready?”

  Twenty-one. My life has come to this—being known as a number. I’m surprised they don’t tag my ear.

  I take a deep breath. “I’ve gotta go, Mom.”

  “Okay, call me after!”

  “I can’t,” I remind her. “Per the contract, we’re not allowed outside phone calls once we meet Barrett and the show kicks off.”

  My mom squeals. “My little girl is meeting Gage Barrett!”

  I roll my eyes. “Did you hear the part where I won’t be able to call you until I get eliminated?”

  “Oh, honey, then I’m certain I won’t hear from you for months. You’re sure to…enthrall him.”