by Anne Eliot
“Let’s go, people,” Gregory urges again. “My mother wants to get to know Sage some before the wedding.”
“When’s the wedding supposed to be?” I whisper, working very hard not to look back at Angel and Mrs. Perino, because I know the sight of them standing there waving will do me in.
“Yeah, how and when will we plan it?” Sage vaults himself into the limo, his voice growing muffled as he shouts, “Wow. This is so cool in here. Holy cow, a flat screen folds out from the ceiling!”
“Don’t wake my little Apple. I want her rested when she sees her mommy.” Adam’s scolding voice pushes away the tears and makes me smile a little.
Royce, like he knows I need some support, does my buckle before doing his. This time when he places his arm over my shoulder, I don’t even feel funny about it. It simply feels like it belongs there. “I thought you understood, Robin. It’s all set up. The wedding is happening after the show. It’s going to be our encore.” He glances at his phone for the time. “In less than three hours.”
“What? Now? Today?” I ask. “How?”
“In order to create a storm bigger than the monsoon that’s about to hit, we have to create a typhoon of our own. Adam’s going to introduce everyone to his wife and his baby, which will start the waves of Instagram rolling. Then I’m going to give an amazing speech about love at first sight and say something about how we met, and how I knew you were the one.” He wiggles his brows. “Then, we come clean about how your dad is missing, tell everyone how you’re a runaway, and how your brother was going to be taken away—how all of that made me want to marry you more.” He tugs the edges of my veil free of the seatbelt. “You are going to walk out in the dress that matches this scratchy thing, be handed off to me by Sage. If we do this right, by then, everyone in the audience will have lost their minds from the story we just told them. We’ll say the ‘I-do’ parts while your pretty face is on the jumbo-screens and poof…” He flashes his hands wide like he’s a magician. “It will all be posted online, if not already live-streamed by at least ten thousand people, and you and I will be international news by morning.”
When I say nothing, and the limousine grows silent as everyone soaks in all that Royce just said, he leans over me and stares directly at my face.
“Hey? You okay? Maybe I was a little too superficial about how I said all of that. I forget you’re not used to…me. How we do things, but I can assure you it’s going to be epic. Knowing our stylists and sage managers, it will also be a beautiful, memorable wedding, okay?”
His low voice sends shivers down my spine and those silver eyes paint my face with this new, kind and protective expression that’s him, worrying just for me.
It’s something maybe I don’t deserve to have, but it’s something that I’m already getting used to. Something I’m starting to crave. The mask he’s worn to hide himself from me since day one seems completely erased, and I don’t think it’s coming back. At least, not between us. “What are you thinking? Are we good?” he asks.
Inside my head I’m screaming: I’m thinking I don’t know you. I’m thinking I might love you. I’m thinking this will never work. I think my father might kill you when he comes home and I’m thinking about your lips and how I want to kiss you again, because that’s what you do right after you say, ‘I do,’ …
“Robin?” He leans closer, eyes scanning my face with a flas of white-hot doubt when I still haven’t answered him.
“I-I think it’s a great idea,” I blurt out. “We’re good, And…” I pause to swallow what feels like a truckload of cardboard and sand that’s clogging the back of my throat. It’s because I can’t tear my eyes off of Royce’s earnest, kind face, nor can I fathom that I’m just going to simply walk out on stage and let this guy put a ring on my finger in front of the whole planet!
Is he joking, asking me if we’re good?
Hell no, we’re not good.
“And what?” Royce presses me to finish what I’d started to say.
I’m very aware that everyone, especially my brother, is staring, worse, listening for any wavers in my voice. I force myself to smile as happily at Sage as I can. Then I look to Royce again. Up at him. Way up. To a safe looking spot. The place where his thick hair meets his brow. Not into those eyes and not at those distracting lips. “And…”I gulp. “I think…that…yeah…we’re going to be okay. We really are.”
“Of course we are.”
I’m envious of Royce’s steady voice. He sounded much more confident than I just did.
Like he knows I want to run, he squeezes me in closer to his side, trailing the back of his hand down my cheek in this calming way, adding, “We got this. Love conquers all, and we’re in love, right, Robin?”
He smiles and winks at me in this way that makes my heart flip upside down, then he takes my hand in his while he smiles at my brother who’s still watching us carefully. Too carefully.
I catch Sage’s gaze, and nod, smiling over at him, too. I hope my expression reads that I’m happy and that this is real, and that all is well.
Finally buying it, Sage smiles back at us with a grin that’s like a sunbeam.
The wonder in my brother’s eyes, the happiness on his flushed, excited face, reminds me that Sage is safe. Safe to stay with me, and safer than he has been since I convinced him to run away with me, all thanks to these generous people and their high priced lawyers.
“Yes. We’re in love,” I echo, leaning my head against Royce’s shoulder. I have to close my eyes as a wave of pure relief takes over. Also, because I can’t bear to look at Sage while I practice saying the big, whopping lie that I’ll soon have to say convincingly to everyone.
Everyone in the whole world.
“We are…completely in love.”
THE END
(To be continued in Runaway Heart)
Excerpt
Runaway Heart
Book Two in the Runaway Rockstar Series
Chapter One ~ Royce
Name: Royce Devlin
Job: Singer, Guarderobe
Personal Facebook followers: 4,987,698 and counting.
Personal Instagram followers: 33,495,605 and counting.
Estimated number of world-wide fans for his band, Guarderobe: 80 million and counting.
Long Term Relationships: 0
Fake wives starting now: 1
I’m losing it, because it’s my wedding day.
Because it’s my fake wedding day, and I’m not prepared to have a fake wedding day. Hell, I’m not prepared to have a real wedding day, either. That’s because I’m only twenty-one, too young, too sober, and too far from Las Vegas to even think about getting married, even fake married.
But damn. Speeding along in a dark limo crammed in next to your silent, dressed-up family, your best friends, and the shaking, breathtakingly beautiful girl who is about to sacrifice her life and freedom for you, all because you’re a complete fuck-up, sure makes one hell of a no-going-back impression on a guy.
Robin, my soon to be wife, is only eighteen today. Meaning, if twenty-one is too young to get married, then getting married on your eighteenth birthday is fucking unheard of, considering it is not Medieval Times, and not one of us is from a town that has any sort of back woods connected to it. Which is where this type if shit, I think may still happen in America, but even there, I’ll bet this kind of fast wedding only goes down if the girl is knocked up and someone’s brought a gun. Right?
But my bride is not pregnant. Hell, we haven’t had sex once, or even officially dated. Oh, and worse, my fake-bride just graduated high school. High school!
Which is why I’m going straight to hell.
But hell is where I’ve been going ever since I met Robin Love. Ever since I couldn’t leave her alone…ever since I ruined her reputation and possibly her life.
Dear Reader
Dear Reader,
I hope you will keep reading to find out what happens to Robin and Royce on that world tour, or go back to high s
chool and read how Vere and Hunter first became friends, and wait to find out just what happened in Wales between Adam and Eve.
Acknowledgments
As I write this note, I realize there are too many people to thank. People who are family and friends, those who read my other work before this, those who contact me to goof off online, who’ve tweeted me, shared Instagram pics with me, who message me on Facebook, who email me, who come to signings, even all the way in Germany and Italy to make me cry. Those who click a simple ‘like’ once in a while, and for all of you hero-bloggers who do reviews and create safe spaces and love bubbles for authors like me, and to those who’ve helped me with creating this series, who told me things would turn out fine, I owe you so much. I also can’t forget those who helped me shape this story into what it finally became—as well as all who did the same with my other books.
Please know you all also helped shape my whole heart with your insights and perseverance and love of books. Some of you with a simple ‘hello,’ or ‘I’m waiting for that book, where is it?’ kept that same heart beating every day when I thought I might give up on Robin and Sage, and even on myself. For those of you who ‘read it’ and ‘read it again’ so I could be sure, I have no words but I’ll do anything you want for the rest of your lives. Because of your unconditional love and patience, I am here, this book is here and I’m forever grateful.
To the real military families and my own bunch of Army, Special Forces guys from Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, men who completed the real Robin Sage, and whom I pestered for two whole books with ‘what-if’ questions about the various possibilities about being M-I-A? I thank you so much for your service and for helping me out with this story. I hug each of you and your awesome steadfast, brave families, and I can only say I’m so proud to call you my friends. For those of you who’ve never met any Special Forces troops, our country is in very good, honorable and capable, protective hands.
I love you all, and you know who you are. Again, thank you so much.
For all of you amazing people who are reading a book by me for the first time, who love books and love reading, please know I strive so hard to make readers happy. It means everything to me that you read all the way to these exact words that I typed right here, and that you took a chance on me and my story. It is so humbling that you give your time to me and my support my dream of being an author.
Please visit my website for more information about my crazy life in Colorado, my two naughty dogs, other books, signings and place I’ll be heading to next, or to sign up for my newsletter. I’d love to hear from you and though it takes time, I try to write everyone back who writes to me when I can.
XoX Annie
www.anneEliot.com
Also by Anne Eliot
Other books in this series
Unmaking Hunter Kennedy, The prequel—How Vere met Hunter.
Runaway Girl
Runaway Hearts
Runaway Star
Other Bestselling Books by Anne Eliot:
Almost
How I Fall
How I Fly