Page 74 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

It did feel right, but that didn’t mean it was. Even so, I sighed and kissed her again, slowly and tenderly with absolutely no rush to it this time, but then her phone began ringing and she groaned against my mouth.

“Please tell me that’s not mine.”

“It’s yours.”

She pulled away, grabbed the phone from the coffee table, glanced at the screen, and grimaced. “It’s Marcus.”

“Yeah.” I blew out a heavy breath and dropped back against the couch. “That figures.”

Her eyes remained on mine as she slid her thumb across the screen and answered. “Hey, Marcus.”

I braced myself for her to just come out with it. Maggie was unpredictable that way. If she really had decided that she wanted this, there would be no stopping her from telling him everything and just trying to dictate how it would all move forward from there, but instead, she listened to him for a few moments. Then she nodded.

“Yeah, I’ll be back in the city later today.” She paused to listen again. “Yes, I understand. I know, Marcus. Okay. Yeah. I’ll be there.”

After another pause to listen, she hung up and sighed. “I’m expected for tea. It’s my first public-facing event since the whole runaway-bride situation.”

I dragged a hand over my face. Well, hello, earth. It’s really not good to see you.

“What are we doing, Maggie?” I asked after just staring up at her for a few long moments.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, cuddling back into my arm. “It does feel good though, doesn’t it?”

I nodded and curled my arm around her once more, knowing that this felt better than anything in a long time, but my feelings for her had been growing steadily for the last few weeks and they were becoming more intense by the day. Underneath all that, however, was a growing pit in my stomach of guilt and shame over what we were doing.

Maggie and Daniel weren’t together. They weren’t in love and she wasn’t engaged to him, but it still felt like I was doing something wrong. I suddenly felt slimy, like I was doing exactly what my father had done, and that?

I wasn’t sure it was a feeling I could live with. Not for anything in the world—and honestly, not even for Maggie Pembroke.

CHAPTER 32

MAGGIE

Before I’d even taken a single step toward my mother’s party, I’d been pulled into the drawing room and issued with strict instructions. My father had stood behind the drinks cart with his posture so rigid that he’d looked like a drill sergeant and he’d issued his edicts like I’d be sentenced to manual labor if I didn’t comply.

“When you go in there, you will smile, Maggie. You will answer all questions according to the information you have been provided, and you will play along with the version of events as outlined in the joint statement we issued with the Hawthornes.”

“In other words, I had a severe allergic reaction to shellfish and almost died.” I’d nodded, accepting my punishment for the mess I’d made without arguing. “I can do that.”

“Make sure you do.” He’d given me a hard look and then sent me in here, to where our living and dining rooms had been turned into a cafe-type setup that spilled out to the entertainment area and the gardens.

Once again, my mother had outdone herself, fresh flowers arranged on every surface and white linen tablecloths and napkins on every small, round cafe table that’d been brought in. Expensively dressed waitstaff circulated with trays of champagne and canapes while jugs of water containing several different types of fruit were displayed on the sideboard.

I was bombarded with women from the moment I stepped in, but it took me less than two minutes to notice a very specific face missing from the crowd. Nora Thayer. I sighed. Clearly, she’d been good enough to be dragged into the wedding planning, but it must only have been because she’d been useful to my mother in that role.

The woman was many things and one of them was that she was still known as one of the few people who could pull the most breathtaking events seemingly out of thin air. Obviously, she’d had Ryan’s help this time around, but no one could blame her for needing some support while she tried to find her sea legs again.

It pissed me off to absolutely no end that she’d been good enough when we’d needed help, but not for the party that’d been put together as the soft launch of my return to society. No one had said it in so many words, but that was what this was.

The room was filled to the brim with women whose outfits for this tea alone had probably cost enough to finance a small country for year. Nora probably wouldn’t have been comfortable here anyway. These women probably had yet another, even more expensive dress waiting at home for whatever they were doing after this, but Nora didn’t.

The way Ryan spoke about how his father’s scandal had affected her, she was probably already drawing a bath before retiring for the evening. As I worked my way around the room, air-brushing kisses to cheeks and smiling like the princess I was supposed to be, I found myself wondering if he’d told his mother about us.

I also wondered what she thought about it if he had.

Would she accept us, or would she warn him against me after the way my family turned our backs on them?

A glass of champagne was pressed into my hand before the thought could go any further, a particularly gossip-hungry friend of my mother’s grinning like a shark as she handed it over. “Oh, Maggie, darling. It’s so wonderful to see you up and about again. How are you feeling?”