Rescuing the Royal Runaway Bride Read online

  There was nothing to be done except to help.

  Decision made, he held out both hands as if dealing with a wounded animal. “Any way you can jiggle your foot free?”

  “Wow. That’s a thought.” It seemed she’d hit the next stage of shock—sarcasm.

  “Says the woman who threw a shoe at an oncoming car in the hope of saving herself from getting squished.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Her fists curled tighter around her skirt. Beneath the head-to-toe finery she was pure street urchin itching for a fight.

  Shock, he reminded himself. Stuck. And she must have been cold. There wasn’t much to the top part of her dress but a few layers of lace draped over her shoulders, leaving her arms bare. The way the skirt moved as it fell to her feet made it look like layers of woven air.

  Air he’d have to get a grip on if he had any hope of pulling her free.

  Will slid the jacket of his morning suit from his shoulders and tossed it over the windscreen into the car. Rolling his sleeves to his elbows, he took a turn about her, eyeing the angles, finding comfort in the application of basic geometry and calculus.

  She looked about five-feet-eight, give or take the foot stuck in the mud.

  “What do you weigh?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind.” It would come down to the force of the suction of the mud anyway. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take you from behind.”

  A slim auburn eyebrow rose dramatically. “I thank you for asking first, but I do mind.”

  Will’s gaze lifted from the behind in question to find the woman looking over her shoulder at him. Those big eyes were unblinking, a glint of warmth, laughter even, flickering in the blue. Or was it green?

  Right. He’d heard it too. He felt his own cheek curving into an unexpected smile. “My intentions are pure. I only wish to get you out of your...sticky situation.”

  Her right fist unclenched from her skirt, her fingers sliding past one another. Then her eyes dipped as she gave him a thorough once-over to match the one he’d given her.

  Will crossed his arms and waited. He was the pre-eminent living name in modern astronomy. Eyes Only at NASA. An open invitation to the UN. On first-name terms with presidents and prime ministers alike.

  Yet none of that mattered on this muddy country road as, with a deep sigh of unwitting capitulation, the woman waved an idle hand his way and said, “Fine. Let’s get this over and done with.”

  First time for everything, Will thought as he moved into position. Adrenaline having been sapped away, he was now very much aware of the damage incurred by his footwear. He attempted to find purchase on the boggy ground. “Ready?”

  She muttered something that sounded like, “Not even close.” But then she lifted her arms.

  Will wrapped his arms around her waist. There really was nothing of her. More dress than woman. He grounded his feet, and heaved.

  Nothing happened. She was well-bogged.

  “Grip my arms,” he said. “Lean back a little. Into me.”

  In for a penny, she wrapped her arms over his, her fingers shockingly cold as they curved over his wrists. But right behind the chill came that energy, like electricity humming just beneath her skin.

  Will said, “On three I need you to press down strongly with your free foot, then jump. Okay?”

  She nodded and another curl fell down, tumbling into his face. He blinked to dislodge a strand from his eyelashes. And a sweet, familiar scent tickled his nose till he could taste it on the back of his tongue. Honeysuckle.

  “Here we go,” he grumbled. “One. Two. And...three!”

  He felt her sink into the ground and as she pushed he pulled. With a thick, wet schlock her foot popped free.

  She spun, tottered, her feet near slipping out from under her. And finally came to a halt with her face lodged into his neck.

  There she breathed. Warm bursts of air wafted over his skin and turned his hair follicles into goose flesh.

  Then he felt the moment she realised she had one hand gripping his sleeve, the other clamped to his backside for all she was worth.

  The breathing stopped. A heartbeat slunk by. Two. Then she slowly released her hold.

  Only, the second she let go, she slipped again.

  With a whoop she grabbed him—the sound shaking a pair of bluebirds loose. They swooped and twittered before chasing one another down the tunnel and away.

  And suddenly she was trembling in earnest. Violent shakes racked her body, as if she were about to self-destruct.

  Dammit. Computing how best to separate her from her trap was one thing, but this was beyond his pay grade.

  She made a noise then. Something between a squeak and a whimper. The next time she shook she broke free with a cracking laugh. Then more laughter tumbled on top of the first. Braying, cackling, riotous laughter—the kind that took hold of a person until they could barely breathe.

  Will looked to the sky. He wasn’t built for this kind of roller coaster of emotion. It was so taxing and there was no logical pathway out.

  Ready to take his leave before things turned again, Will took her firmly by the arms.

  Another curl fell to dangle in front of her face. She crossed her eyes and blew it away with a quick stream of air shot from the side of her mouth. When she uncrossed her eyes she looked directly into his.

  Spots of pretty pink sat high on her pale cheeks, clear even beneath the tracks of old tears. As her laughter faded, her wide mouth still smiled softly. Light sparked in the bluish green of her huge eyes, glints of folly and fun. And she sank into his grip as if she could stay there all day.

  Instead of the words that had been balanced on the tip of his tongue, Will found himself saying, “If you’re laughing because your other foot is now stuck I will leave you here.”

  A grin flashed across her face, fast and furious, resonant of a pulse fusion blast. “Not stuck,” she said. “Muddy, mortified, falling apart at the seams, but the last thing I am any more is stuck.”

  Will nodded. Even though he was the one who suddenly felt stuck. For words. For a decision on what to do next. For a reason to let her go.

  Which was why he let her go. He unclamped his fingers one at a time, giving her no reason to fall into his arms again.

  The woman reminded him of a newly collapsed star, unaware as yet that her unstable gravitational field syphoned energy from everything she touched.

  But Will wasn’t about to give any away. He gave every bit of energy to his work. It was important, it was ground-breaking, it was necessary. He had none to spare.

  “Look,” he said, stopping to clear his throat. “I’m heading towards court so I can give you a lift if you’re heading in that direction. Or drop you...wherever it is you are going.” On foot. Through muddy countryside. In what had probably been some pretty fancy shoes, considering the party dress that went with them. From what Will had seen there was nothing for miles bar the village behind him, and the palace some distance ahead. “Were you heading to the wedding, then?”

  It was a simple enough question, but the girl looked as if she’d been slapped. Laughter gone, colour gone, dark tears suddenly wobbled precariously in the corners of her eyes.

  She recovered quickly, dashing a finger under each eye, sniffing and taking a careful step back. “No. No, thanks. I’m... I’ll be fine. You go ahead. Thank you, though.”

  With that she lifted her dress, turned her back on him and picked her way across the road, slipping a little, tripping on her skirt more.

  If the woman wanted to make her own way, dressed and shod as she was, then who was he to argue? He almost convinced himself too. Then he caught the moment she glanced towards the palace, hidden somewhere on the other side of the trees, and decidedly changed tack so that she was heading in the absolute opposite direction.

  And, like the snick
of a well-oiled combination lock, everything suddenly clicked into place.

  The dress with its layers of pink lace, voluminous skirt and hints of rose-gold thread throughout.

  The pink train—was that what they called it?—trailing in the mud behind her.

  Will’s gaze dropped to her left hand clenched around a handful of skirt. A humungous pink rock the size of a thumbnail in a thin rose-gold band glinted thereupon.

  He’d ribbed Hugo enough through school when the guy had been forced to wear the sash of his country at formal events: pink and rose-gold—the colours of the Vallemontian banner.

  Only one woman in the country would be wearing a gown in those colours today.

  If Will wasn’t mistaken, he’d nearly run down one Mercedes Gray Leonine.

  Who—instead of spending her last moments as a single woman laughing with her bridesmaids and hugging her family before heading off to marry the estimable Prince Alessandro Hugo Giordano and become a princess of Vallemont—was making a desperate, muddy, shoeless run for the hills.

  Perfect.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”

  Sadie swallowed as the man’s voice echoed through the thicket. Or she tried at the very least. After crying non-stop for the last hour, her throat felt like sandpaper.

  In fact, her entire body felt raw. Sensitive. Prickly. As if her senses were turned up to eleven.

  Adding a near-death experience hadn’t helped a jot.

  Well, pure and utter panic had got her this far and she planned to ride it out until she reached the border. Or a cave. Or a sinkhole that could swallow her up. Where was a batch of quicksand when you needed it?

  She gathered as much of her dress as she was able and kept on walking, hoping her sardonic liberator would simply give up and drive away.

  Unfortunately, his deep voice cut through the clearing like a foghorn. “You’ve made your point. You can stop walking now.”

  Sadie’s bare foot squelched into a slippery patch of mud. She closed her eyes. Took a breath. Turned. And faced down the stranger in her midst.

  When she’d heard the car coming around the corner her life had flashed before her eyes. Literally. Moments, big and small, fluttering through her mind like pages in a picture book.

  Not yet school age, screaming, pigtails flying behind her as she was being chased through the palace halls by a grinning Hugo. Her mother waggling a finger at her and telling her to act like a lady.

  At five, maybe six, Princess Marguerite gently reminding her not to hold her hand up to block the bright lights from the TV crew. Hugo standing behind a camera making faces as she sat on a couch in the palace library, answering questions about growing up as a “regular girl” in the palace.

  The blur of high school without Hugo at her side—the first sense of feeling adrift without her safety net.

  Her attempt to overcome that feeling—wide-eyed and terrified, landing in New York when she was twenty. Then grabbing that safety net with both hands as, teary and weary, she fled New York and moved back into the palace at twenty-five.

  Her memory had not yet hit the anxious, fractured, out-of-control mess of the past few weeks when she’d spied the driver on the muddy road.

  For time had slowed—imprinting on her mind wind-ruffled dark hair, a square jaw, a face as handsome as sin. A surge of drama at the end. At least the last thing I’ll ever see is a thing of beauty, she’d thought.

  Of course, that was before he’d proceeded to storm at her for a good five minutes straight.

  Quite the voice he had. Good projection. With those darkly scowling eyes and that muscle ticking in his impossibly firm jaw she’d first thought him a Hamlet shoo-in. From a distance, though, with those serious curls and proud square shoulders he’d make a fine Laertes. Then again, she’d had a good grip on that which was hidden beneath the suit. A dashing Mercutio, perhaps?

  Though not in one of her high-school productions, alas. One look at him and her twelfth-grade drama students would be too busy swooning to get anything done.

  That, and she’d been “encouraged” to take a sabbatical from her job the moment she’d become engaged. The palace had suggested six months for her to settle into her new role before “deciding” if she wished to return.

  “Ms,” he said again, and she landed back in the moment with a thud.

  Focus, her subconscious demanded, lucidity fluctuating like a flickering oil lamp during a storm. Her brain seemed to have kicked into self-protect mode, preferring distraction over reality. But, as much as she might wish she was living a high-school play, this was as real as it got.

  “Ms—”

  “Miss,” she shot back, levelling the stranger with a leave me be glance. Oh, yes, she was very much a “miss”. Her recent actions made sure of that. She remembered the rock weighing down her left hand and carefully tucked it into a swathe of pink tulle.

  “As I said I’ll be fine from here. I promise. You can go.” She took a decided step back, landing right on the cusp of a jagged rock. She winced. Cried out. Hopped around. Swore just a bit. Then pinched the bridge of her nose when tears threatened to spill again.

  “Miss,” said the stranger, his rumbling voice quieter now, yet somehow carrying all the more. “You have lost both your shoes. You’re covered in mud. You’re clearly not...well. It’s a mile or more to the nearest village. And the afternoon is settling in. Unless you have another mode of transport under that skirt, you’re either coming with me or you’re sleeping under the stars. Trust me.”

  Trust him? Did he think she was born under a mushroom? Quite possibly, she thought, considering the amount of mud covering the bottom half of her dress.

  Not witness to the conversations going on inside Sadie’s head, the stranger went on, “How could I look myself in the mirror if I heard on the news tomorrow that a woman was eaten by a bear, the only evidence the remains of a pink dress?”

  Sadie coughed. Not a laugh. Not a whimper. More like the verbal rendering of her crumbling resolve. “Bears are rare in Vallemont. And they have plenty of fish.”

  “Mmm. The headline was always more likely to be Death by Tulle.” He swished a headline across the sky. “‘Woman trips over log hidden entirely from view by copious skirts, lands face-first in puddle. Drowns.’”

  Sadie’s eye twitched. She wasn’t going to smile. Not again. That earlier burst of laughter was merely the most recent mental snap on a day punctuated with mental snaps.

  She breathed out hard. She’d walked miles through rain-drenched countryside in high heels and a dress that weighed as much as she did. She hadn’t eaten since...when? Last night? There was a good chance she was on the verge of dehydration considering the amount of water she’d lost through her tear ducts alone. She was physically and emotionally spent.

  And she needed whatever reserve of energy, chutzpah and pure guts she had left, considering what she’d be facing over the next few days, weeks, decades, when she was finally forced to face the mess she had left behind.

  She gave the stranger a proper once-over. Bespoke suit. Clean fingernails. Posh accent. That certain je ne sais quoi that came of being born into a life of relative ease.

  The fact that he had clearly not taken to her was a concern. She was likable. Extremely likable. Well known, in fact, for being universally liked. True, he’d not caught her in a banner moment, but still. Worth noting.

  “You could be an axe murderer for all I know,” she said. “Heck, I could be an axe murderer. Maybe this is my modus operandi.”

  He must have seen something in her face. Heard the subtle hitch in her voice. Either way, his head tipped sideways. Just a fraction. Enough to say, Come on, honey. Who are you trying to kid?

  The frustrating thing was, he was right.

  It was pure dumb luck that he had happened upon her right in the moment she’d be
come stuck. And it was dumber luck that he was a stranger who clearly had no clue who she was. For her face had been everywhere the last few weeks. Well, not her face. The plucked, besmeared, stylised face of a future princess. For what she had imagined would be a quiet, intimate ceremony, the legal joining of two friends in a mutually beneficial arrangement, had somehow spiralled way out of control.

  She’d had more dumb luck that not a single soul had seen her climb out the window of the small antechamber at the base of the six-hundred-year-old palace chapel and run, the church bells chiming loud enough to be heard for twenty miles in every direction.

  Meaning karma would be lying in wait to even out the balance.

  She looked up the road. That way led to the palace. To people who’d no doubt discovered she was missing by now and would search to the ends of the earth to find her. A scattered pulse leapt in her throat.

  Then she looked at the stranger’s car, all rolling fenders and mag wheels, speed drawn in its every line. Honestly, if he drove a jalopy it would still get her further from trouble faster than her own feet.

  Decision made, she held out a hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “Not an axe murderer, then, but a thief?”

  “I’m going to let my mother know who to send the police after if I go missing.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “In my other dress.”

  A glint sparked deep in her accomplice’s shadowed eyes. It was quite the sight, triggering a matching spark in her belly. She cleared her throat as the man bent over the car and pulled a slick black phone from a space between the bucket seats.

  He waved his thumb over the screen, and when it flashed on he handed it to her.

  The wallpaper on his phone was something from outer space. A shot from Star Wars? Maybe underneath the suave, urban hunk mystique he was a Trekkie.

  The wallpaper on the phone she’d unfortunately left at the palace in her rush to get the heck out of there was a unicorn sitting at a bar drinking a “human milkshake”. Best not to judge.

  She found the text app, typed in her mother’s number.