All Jenna’s breath left her at once. She’d had the same thought during the toast Elliot had made. His words were light and sort of jokey but made her feel like she was just another acquisition. A set-piece Elliot needed to build the appearance of a perfect life. She’d dismissed that as cold feet, too.
But she wasn’t crazy.
And she wasn’t getting married today.
“You’re right.” The words came out on a long exhale.
Tommy squeezed her hand, his expression concerned but relieved. “What do you want to do?”
Chapter Two
Zach Ruiz glided to a stop by the valet stand at the front of the most commanding church in the city and put his Mercedes in park. But instead of getting out of the car, he asked himself for what had to be the thousandth time what the hell he was doing at Elliot Hansen’s wedding. After weeks of asking, he still didn’t know. Curiosity, maybe? Ego? Was Elliot’s invitation a dare? Or maybe he was offering an olive branch.
He snorted. It would take more than a branch to make up for what he’d done. A damn grove of olive trees wouldn’t make anything about that whole situation forgivable. Or tolerable.
Even though he was running a few minutes late for the start of the ceremony, Zach sat in the car, thumbs drumming on the steering wheel, trying to decide if he was curious enough about Elliot’s intentions to witness his wedding or whether he should just drive away. He supposed it could be a change of heart but unlikely.
Zach hated this dithering. In his business, he gathered the data, designed and applied a predictive algorithm, and advised his clients to make a decision based on the results. It was satisfyingly concrete, the path ahead crystal clear. People were more complex than data, though. Feelings, motivations, potential outcomes—none of that was predictable because emotion was an inconstant variable that always, always threw a wrench into the best algorithms. Zach ran his personal life the same as his business. Dithering was never part of the outcome.
He glanced at the hand-lettered invitation lying on the leather passenger seat, slightly crumpled from throwing it in the garbage and then fishing it back out at least half a dozen times over the past couple weeks. He just couldn’t puzzle out why Elliot had reached out to him when it made no logical sense to do so. Or maybe Zach just had incomplete data.
Which was why he’d come, he supposed. Attending the wedding was really the only way he’d figure out why he’d received the invitation.
Zach checked his watch again. Where the hell were the valets? He supposed they could be on break. After all, the guests had probably all arrived half an hour ago at least.
Or maybe the lack of valets was a sign that he shouldn’t be there at all, volunteering for whatever game Elliot was playing. There was a stack of files on his desk and a set of data he was dying to dig in to for a new client. Plan B: He would go home, forget the stupid wedding, forget Elliot, and lose himself in work. Like he did every Saturday. And Tuesday. Most Sundays. As well as Monday, Thursday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Thinking Plan B was sounding better and better, he picked up his phone to see if Marcy had forwarded the files he’d asked for.
Suddenly, the rear door of the Mercedes opened and someone slid into the backseat.
“Drive,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry.”
Something in the tone of her voice—desperation, maybe—made Zach put the car in gear and jam his foot on the gas before his brain caught up enough to ask the basic questions. Like, who the hell was the woman in his backseat and why should he obey her orders to drive?
He glanced in the rearview mirror, but all he saw was a cloud of white—a veil pinned to the back of a brunette head as his passenger looked out the back window, as if she was expecting someone to give chase. Someone she didn’t want to catch up to her.
Oh shit. It was a bride, his sluggish brain realized. A runaway bride.
“Are you…okay?” he asked, merging into traffic. Of course she wasn’t okay. Okay, people didn’t jump in the back of strangers’ cars and order them to drive. Unless they were carjackers. The wedding gown made a carjacking statistically unlikely.
Zach glanced in the rearview again, and all the breath left his body. The pertinent questions refused to form in his mouth. It was like the breath had been knocked out of him and all he could do was stare. Zach was sure he had some goofy gape-mouthed look on his face, but damn. The woman made perfect sense of every sappy soft rock song ever recorded. She was beautiful and radiated a kind of earthy sexiness that left him awestruck.
“Watch out!”
Zach jerked his attention back to the road and swerved into the empty lane just in time to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him.
“Did you just get this job yesterday?” the bride asked, annoyed. “Turn here.”
Shaken, and afraid to stare into the mirror a second time, Zach turned off the main road onto a side street.
“Just make a few random turns. Make sure he’s not following us.”
He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but escaping whomever had the beauty in his backseat spooked seemed like an excellent idea. Drug dealers? Sex traffickers? Paparazzi? Or was she running from an unwanted fiancé?
Zach turned left, then right, then right again, then left. That put them in a middle-class residential neighborhood where everyone parked on the street. The Mercedes didn’t exactly fit in with the decades-old Toyotas and pick-up trucks crowding the narrow street, but maybe it would do for a few minutes until he figured out what the hell was going on. He maneuvered into an open spot and put the car in park before turning around to face the mystery woman.
“I’m always willing to help damsels in distress, but you want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Zach was trying to focus on fact-finding, and although he was relieved to have regained the power of speech, his heart beat out a rhythm roughly equivalent to being chased by a bear.
“I’m not a damsel,” she said, her face turned down as she twisted the giant rock of an engagement ring on her third finger round and round. “It’s possible I may be in distress.”
Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She wasn’t going to cry, was she? Please, please don’t let her cry.
She let out a few shallow breaths. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure if Elliot already paid you, since the wedding planner arranged for the car service, but I’ll pay extra if you could just wait here a moment. I just need to…think a minute.”
Elliot. As in Elliot Hansen. Of course. What other bride would be escaping the church but Elliot’s? His enemy’s runaway bride was running away in the backseat of Zach’s car. And she thought he was the chauffeur Elliot had hired.
Zach had thought up a lot of sweet revenge possibilities since Elliot had screwed him over, but this was better than all of them put together and multiplied by a factor of five thousand.
“Take as long as you need. But I should tell you, I’m not the driver your fiancé hired.”
Her head shot up, her face going pale beneath the makeup caked on her face. She moved to the door handle. She was going to bolt again.
“I’m a friend of Elliot’s,” Zach added quickly. “I was an invited to the wedding.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “The Hansen-Taylor wedding?”
“Yes.” He picked up the crumpled invitation and handed it to her. “See? I’m not a serial killer or something. Just a friend of the groom.”
He almost choked on the word “friend.”
“I’ve never met you,” she said, still suspicious. “And I thought I knew all of Elliot’s friends.”
“We were college friends and sort of lost contact for a while. Busy with work.” Well, that part was true enough.
“Please don’t tell him where I am,” she said quietly, handing the invitation back to him. He tossed it on the seat next to him.
“I won’t rat you out. Promise.” He gave
her a small smile. “I’m Zach,” he said. He was glad there was a row of seats between them, because he wasn’t sure touching her was a great thing for his cardio health.
What the hell was wrong with him? He liked women. He didn’t have time to date, but he’d had lovers. He hadn’t felt this awkward since the seventh grade when Melissa Wood had asked him to dance and her last name had described his physical state by the second shuffle. This woman affected Zach in unexpected ways, which was unsettling at the very least.
“Jenna.”
She wasn’t what he’d imagined when he’d hunted down the engagement announcement soon after receiving the invitation. Their engagement photo was stiff and formal. He’d expected Jenna to be as shallow as Elliot was, though connected. Elliot would settle for nothing less. It was galling that even after the shitty things Elliot had done to Zach, his life was aligning perfectly—he had the business, the penthouse, the girl…
Except he didn’t. Because the girl was in Zach’s backseat.
“What happened?” Zach asked. “Is this a cold-feet situation, or are you dumping him?” Was it terrible he hoped for the latter? Probably.
“He…” Jenna took a shaky breath, then she looked up and met his gaze. His chest tightened, and he fought that weird, breathless feeling again.
Zach didn’t know where Elliot had met Jenna or how the hell he’d convinced her to marry him, but Zach found himself wanting to help and protect her. And she was gorgeous to boot, with those unique lips, the top slightly fuller than the bottom, and wide, guileless eyes that not even a pound of smoky eye makeup could hide.
She sighed, and Zach forced his attention back to Jenna’s words. “He cares more about what other people think than he does about me.”
Exactly the Elliot Zach knew.
“So, dumping him then.”
Jenna nodded. “Oh God. All those people. All the expense.” She shook her head. Tears were eminent. He didn’t know how to deal with the tears, but he did know how to make a solid, executable plan. He switched into strategy mode.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.”
She sucked up a phlegmy sniffle. “We?”
“Well, I’m not going to just dump you by the side of the road, dressed in an expensive wedding gown.”
“It was five thousand dollars. Elliot picked it out.”
Of course he had. “First, is there someone you want to call? Let them know you’re all right?”
“No, I spoke to my…friends…already.”
Zach nodded. “Good. A kidnapping charge isn’t on my agenda for today.”
The barest hint of a quiver in her lips. “I don’t think you’d do well in prison.”
Oh, he had to hear her reasoning for that. He waited for her to elaborate.
She shrugged as if the reason was obvious. “Too pretty.”
Pretty. Zach Ruiz had been called a lot of things by competitors and friends alike…driven, reclusive, blunt. But pretty?
“Unless you want a prison boyfriend,” she said quickly when he stared at her, wondering how his very focused life had taken a detour to Crazy Town in under ten minutes. “In which case, that’s cool. Love wins, right?”
Zach scrubbed a hand over his face. There was no way to predict what would come out of Jenna’s mouth next, which made him feel off-balance. She was a walking illustration as to why he left the peopling to his staff. “Back to the problem at hand,” he said. “Do you have an apartment? Someplace to stay?”
Her face fell again. “I have a place, but Elliot and I live together.”
“That won’t work then. Friends? Family? Do your parents know?”
She shook her head. “No parents. And my friends, well, they can’t really have overnight guests. It’s not that I fear him or anything. I just need some space. If I go back now…”
“He’ll guilt you into going through with the wedding,” Zach finished. Yeah, he knew how slick Elliot could be. Elliot could talk a drowning man into buying water. Expensive, boutique, bottled water. Which was exactly why Zach had never seen Elliot’s treachery coming until he was packing up his box of belongings and calling an Uber.
“How about a hotel?”
“I don’t have my purse or any of my credit cards.”
Zach could easily pay for a suite at the Ritz, Four Seasons, or wherever she wanted to hide out for as long as she wanted to. He could also invite her to stay at his place, which was plenty large enough. But Marcy always said it made “Spartan” look extravagant, so his apartment might not be very comfortable. And besides, cohabitating wasn’t high on Zach’s list. Especially cohabitation with someone who made Zach feel so not himself. He didn’t think she’d accept either offer, but it was all he had at the moment.
“I can put you up in a hotel,” I said. “You could have a friend bring you things from your apartment.”
“No. But thank you.” She was twisting that ring again. “I feel like Elliot will be there waiting to ambush whoever shows up. I need to get out of town.”
She was right. Then a new idea hit him. “What about the honeymoon?”
“Honeymoon?”
“Where were you planning to go?”
“Paradise Island. It’s an all-inclusive resort on the gulf coast of Florida.”
A resort? Why was Elliot taking her to a commercial resort? Elliot had always craved exclusivity. A private island was more his style. Or maybe a leased villa on a Grecian isle in the Mediterranean. Even borrow one of his well-connected friends’ beach homes on a semi-private cay in Turks and Caicos. But a pre-packaged resort, open to anyone with a couple of grand to spend on a honeymoon?
“My parents honeymooned there,” she said finally. “I always wanted to see it.”
Now it made sense. Jenna was sentimental. And Elliot would certainly have hated it. Still, it was a plan.
“You could go on your honeymoon. To the resort, I mean. Do you think Elliot would follow?”
“I doubt Elliot even remembers the place I booked. That was the only part of the whole wedding he was happy to let me handle.”
Did Elliot even have a pulse? The honeymoon would be the only thing Zach would be able to think about if he was marrying a woman like Jenna. He didn’t appreciate her. Not at all. So why the hell had Elliot even proposed?
“How about this? You go to the resort. Hang out for a few days. Lay low. Get a massage. Drink some Mai Tais. Make a plan.”
She looked hopeful for a moment, but then the quiver was back. “I don’t have any ID, my plane tickets, hotel confirmations, nothing. It’s all at the apartment. And our—my—flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow afternoon. I might be able to change my flight, but I can’t even get on an airplane to fly to the Keys without that stuff.”
“We can go by your place and pick up your purse and suitcase and whatever else you need. Then we’ll see about changing your flight. I’ll put my assistant on it now.”
She nodded. “That could work. Elliot probably hasn’t even figured out I’ve left the church yet. But we’ll have to hurry.”
Zach smiled. It felt like all the pieces were falling into place. It was a chance to make sure Elliot did not get what he wanted and to help a woman who deserved a break. And he didn’t even have to get involved, really. It was just a couple of phone calls and a ride to the airport. Perfect revenge plus a good deed. “Give me the address.”
Chapter Three
Jenna got some strange looks from the doorman and the security guard in her building when she hurried through the lobby in her wedding gown with a man who was not Elliot right behind her. But she made it to the penthouse elevator and punched in the code without anyone stopping them to ask questions. That was good. They needed to get in and out of the apartment before Elliot realized where she’d gone. She had texted Niki from the car with a plea to stall Elliot but offered no further explanation. J
enna wasn’t sure how long he’d wait around before realizing that she would not be participating in the ceremony. Or the wedding. Or a life together.
Once in the elevator, Jenna leaned against the rail, sucking in oxygen and cursing the man—it had to be a man—who’d invented the Python.
She was doing this, leaving Elliot and the rest behind. What came next? The future was now a big black void. But Zach’s idea was a good one. Getting away by herself and lying low for a few days would give her time to think about what she was going to do, what she would say to people. She didn’t know how she would ever explain to Elliot or his family or their friends. But she couldn’t think about that now. She’d think about that tomorrow.
Zach leaned against the opposite wall, tapping a text message into his phone. The phone dinged with a response, and he tucked it into the inside pocket of his tux jacket. Out of the car now and enclosed in the elevator, she could see that he was tall. Much taller than Elliot. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a warm skin tone that made it clear there was some Latin blood in his lineage. Nice, full lips. He kind of had that dark, broody thing going on. In another life—a life in which he wasn’t helping her escape from wedding another man—he would have been just Jenna’s type. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and he hadn’t brought a plus one to the wedding, but she’d bet it wasn’t for lack of opportunity.
“You okay?” A look of concern creased his brow. And no wonder. Jenna was a hot mess. He had to be second-guessing his decision to help her escape.
She hoped she wasn’t ruining his plans, but then she remembered his plans had been to attend her wedding and reception, so that meant his calendar had opened up for the evening. Still, now that the initial rush of panic had passed, she felt weird about imposing on a stranger.
The Anti-Honeymoon Page 2
