Page 2 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“Really. Now all you need to do is let me know what the blushing bride wants for the décor. We’ve got this.”

“Oh, Ryan.” She wrapped both arms around me in a tight hug, her body still trembling against mine, but she’d be okay now. “They’re going to be so pleased to have your help with the wedding as well.”

My eyes slammed shut. Of course, my mother would’ve taken this as a literal invitation that I’d help with the actual wedding too. Fuck. My. Life.

I could try to say no, but once Nora Thayer had an idea, she had a tendency to run with it. Just ask my sister, who’s now married to a guy she didn’t even really know when she said yes.

Jane and Alex were happily married now, deliriously so, but it hadn’t started out that way. The day they had shown up at the courthouse to get married, with my mother and Alex’s brother in tow, they’d barely known each other’s names for a week.

Mom released me and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Thank you, darling. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

I sighed, still considering putting up a fight until I saw the hope in her watery eyes. Curse my soft heart. I can’t say no, can I?

Mom had been through so much and she was only just starting to resurface from the haze of the public humiliation that had turned her into a loopy hermit for the last few years. As far as I knew, this was the first big social event she’d been involved with since my father’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement. I’d encouraged her to go for it, assuring her it would be good for her to get back out there, and I would be an ass to leave her flailing in the wind.

It had taken a lot for her to get this far, and if this shower was a success, it would work wonders for her self-esteem and for her return to the social scene she loved so much. I didn’t much care for it, but it had been her whole life for a long time.

“You’re welcome,” I said finally, offering her a small smile before I squeezed her shoulder again and then pushed to my feet. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

She inclined her chin in a nod, drawing her laptop back across her desk. I got out of there before she could assign me as the designated florist for the wedding too. When the front door shut behind me, a driver was waiting in a sleek black town car outside and I climbed into the back seat, loving the fact that we had stuff like this again.

“Thayer HQ, Tim.”

The driver nodded. “Right away, Mr. Thayer.”

I grinned and settled back in the plush seat. I could probably try to be modest and pretend my family’s fall from grace hadn’t bothered me at all, but that just wasn’t true. It had sucked ass and I, for one, was savoring all the little luxuries that were slowly returning to our lives. The leather seat was softer than a cloud.

I loosened my tie and looked through some emails, scrolling through my phone while Tim drove me to pick up my brother on the way to the office.

The door opened and Holden climbed in, wearing gym clothes and sweating like a pig. He grinned as he dropped into the seat beside me. “Man, it’s nice that Jane can afford to hire us drivers now.”

I was about to agree, but then he slammed the door shut and I recoiled instead, suddenly breathing air that smelled like old socks. “Are you not familiar with the concept of showering after a workout?”

Naturally, Holden ignored me. He’d graduated from Columbia in the spring after a few stops and starts, the result of some reckless antics and bad behavior. These last couple months, it was like he believed graduation had made him invincible.

He was home for the summer, doing a whole lot of nothing like it was a completely acceptable use of his ivy league education.

“What were you doing?” I asked incredulously as the stench permeated every molecule of previously breathable air in the car. “Holy shit, Holden. Did you do your workout in a pig sty?”

“I feel fantastic.” He smirked and leaned back in the seat, scrubbing his hands over his face and letting out a weirdly husky groan. “You should come with me tomorrow. My new trainer is a beast.”

“Literally, from the scent of things.”

As he laughed, my phone buzzed in my hand with an incoming email from our mother about the wedding I’d accidentally volunteered to help with. I cursed under my breath, which apparently invited him to lean across the seat and peer at my phone. “What’s that?”

“Just something Mom roped me into.” I raked my fingers through my hair as I read the basics. “I have no idea how I’m going to get out of it.”

Holden skimmed the message too, then barked out a laugh that made my eyebrows mash together instantly. I knew that laugh and it sounded a lot like he thought he knew something I didn’t.

“What’s so damn funny?” I asked.

He arched an eyebrow at me. “You don’t recognize the name of the bride?”

“No. Should I?”

“Maggie Pembroke, Ryan.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”