Page 114 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“Oh, that’s enough.” Marcus sighed. “They love each other, Dad. Let it go.”

Cliff rounded on him. “Maggie may have gotten away with this, but you and your brothers will not.”

Marcus’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “I know.”

Cliff pointed at me. “You have not won, Ryan. The marriage certificate is for Daniel and Maggie, not you. Legally, there is no valid marriage.”

“Maggie is my wife,” I said, somehow managing to sound a lot calmer than I felt. “I’ll have the paperwork corrected on Monday. As I’m sure you can guess, us Thayers have got a relatively good relationship with a truly astonishing amount of lawyers. I’ve already spoken to one on my way over this morning and he’s assured me there won’t be any problems.”

Daniel looked like he was trying not to laugh, but Marcus stepped forward and clamped a hand over his father’s shoulder. “She’s happy, Dad. She’s married, which is what you wanted, and she married a Thayer. They’ve had some difficult years, but they’re on their way back up, and at the end of the day, every dynasty family has had its problems at some point.”

Cliff’s eyes narrowed to slits, but after a moment, he sighed. “Fine. She can have her inheritance. It’s law. Maggie will get what she’s entitled to, but don’t expect me to celebrate this.”

As soon as the words were out, he walked away, slamming one of the ballroom doors behind him. Daniel, Marcus, and I stood in silence for a few seconds after he left, all of us probably absorbing what had just happened in our own ways and for our own reasons.

Marcus looked exhausted, Daniel still just looked happy, and I hadn’t been struck by lightning for standing up to Cliff Pembroke. All in all, it’s a good result.

Daniel finally broke the silence after taking a few steps back and shooting me a grin. “So, Ryan. Do you golf?”

EPILOGUE

MAGGIE

Mickey’s behavior at puppy class was going to get us permanently banned from civilization as a whole. I was convinced of it. After a month of absolutely no progress and many apologies being issued to the owners of every other puppy in Mickey’s age range, I had a feeling it might just be time to give up.

I burst through the front door with him trotting behind me, his giant paws thudding against the floor. “Your dog is a menace.”

Ryan looked over at me from where he was standing by the windows with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his phone to his ear. With his feet bare, his shirt halfway unbuttoned, and his dark hair all messy, he was annoyingly hot and much too calm to understand yet that his wife had just been the subject of extreme humiliation at the hands of a two-pound Yorkshire terrier.

He showed me he needed a minute but didn’t turn away as he spoke into his phone. “Yes, I know. It’s not viable.”

Naturally, Mickey was the recipient of a personality transplant now that he was back with his favorite person. His ears perked up and his tail wagged wildly as he trotted over to Ryan and sat, perfectly, next to his foot.

I groaned. “Twenty minutes ago, he was wrestling a Yorkie.”

Mickey looked up at him with such an innocent expression on his face that Ryan smiled and scratched behind his ears as he murmured, “Good boy.”

“No, not good boy,” I whispered furiously as I got closer. “He picked up a Yorkie with his whole face and shoved it across the floor.”

Ryan’s shoulders shook with quiet laughter as he cocked his head slightly, still listening to whoever was on the phone. I shook my head at him. “Don’t laugh.”

He finally lifted a hand to cover the microphone. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the Yorkie. It should learn to pick its battles.”

I sighed. “You’re not helping.”

“I’m not trying to.” He reached for me with his free hand and pulled me closer, kissing my cheek before letting his lips graze down to my neck. I immediately forgot what I’d been saying, letting my eyes slide shut even as he spoke into the phone again. “Yeah. No, that’s exactly what I’m saying. We need to stop pitching high-tech manufacturing breakthroughs to people who have never set foot on a factory floor.”

Ryan kissed my neck again without skipping a beat, keeping me close as he continued his conversation like he wasn’t setting my blood on fire. “Cater to the actual blue-collar base. We should focus on what the technology can do for them, not on how impressive it looks on a PowerPoint being presented to a room full of billionaires.”

I smiled, so completely in awe of the fact that Ryan still went out of his way to make me feel like I was the only thing that mattered to him despite whatever else he had going on. “Yeah. Okay. Let them hate me. I’ll handle the fallout, but I’m telling you, this is how we make money.”

He listened for only another beat before he nodded, said goodbye, and hung up. Then he pulled back slightly to look into my eyes. “How was puppy class?”

“Mickey is a criminal.” I wound my arms around his neck. “He almost killed that Yorkie. It was humiliating.”

Ryan grinned and lifted me clean off my feet. I squealed and wrapped my legs around his hips, laughing as he carried me across the room. “Ryan! This is serious. Our puppy is going to get chucked out of school.”

Instead of reacting to the news at all, he kissed my mouth, then my cheek, then my eyelids, then moved back to the corner of my lips. “Tell me everything.”