by Jess Bryant
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t look convinced, not even a little bit but he mimicked her and crossed his own arms over his chest, “My point, princess, is that I got you out of there and I kept you safe. I could have left you in that alley or forced you to go back inside but I didn’t because you seemed seriously freaked out. I got you out of that situation, no questions asked, but now I need some answers. What happened back there to send you running from your own wedding?”
“I just…” She shrugged, looking anywhere but into those piercing blue eyes, “I couldn’t marry him.”
The man looked less than impressed with her answer, “You just couldn’t marry him.”
He repeated her words as if he was trying to make sense of them. The edge of sarcasm she caught in his voice didn’t annoy her this time though, because of course it wouldn’t make sense to a stranger. It barely made any sense to her and she was the one that had run out on the man that everyone had spent years telling her was her perfect match in every way.
He leaned back against his motorcycle, arms still crossed over his broad chest, one eyebrow raised in a look that told her he was running out of patience and he wanted a real answer to his question, “Let’s try that again, why did you run out on your own wedding?”
She huffed, annoyed by his persistence and then realized something, “I don’t even know your name.”
“And?” he drawled.
“And, I’m not going to tell my sob story to a man whose name I don’t even know.” She gave a prim snort but he only rolled his eyes like she was being ridiculous.
“Tyler St. James.” He shrugged one shoulder and his lips curled, “Should I bow or is there some other customary greeting you’d prefer, princess?”
“I told you to stop calling me that!” Her voice came out whiny and she hated it almost as much as his husky laughter that came after.
“And I told you I wanted a straight answer. Let’s see who gives first.”
Ashtyn took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. This man was like nobody she’d ever met. He was coarse and had the oddest sense of humor. He seemed to enjoy needling her just to see her react. She had no idea how he could have been friends with Aaron, who had no sense of humor and couldn’t abide anything outside the strictest of manners and propriety, but she decided that she liked him. Even if he was infuriatingly persistent in his need for answers she didn’t want to give.
“Fine.” She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin up, “You want to know what happened? Here’s what happened. I decided that I couldn’t marry Aaron today. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. He and I… we make sense on paper but in real life…”
“He’s about as exciting as a cardboard box?” Tyler supplied when she trailed off.
“No!” She jumped to the defense of her fiancé, her ex fiancé she reminded herself. “Aaron isn’t boring.”
“Uh-huh.” Tyler twirled his finger in a circle, motioning for her to continue and though she really wanted to argue that Aaron wasn’t boring, she knew there was no point. Tyler already knew she was lying if he was friends with the man. Aaron was boring and she’d basically just been thinking the same thing herself.
“Anyway…” she heaved a dramatic sigh, “I’m not ready to get married and be tied down. I want more out of life than to just be somebody’s wife. I want to be me. I want to figure out who that is and I can’t do that if I’m pretending to be the girl that they all want me to be.”
Tyler was staring at her again when she finished speaking and she bit her lip. She’d said too much from the way his eyes focused on her and those dark brows of his furrowed. Finally, he nodded and the air she hadn’t realized she was holding escaped her in a gush of relief.
“Okay.” He kept nodding. “I get that.”
“You do?” She was the one that looked surprised now and she knew it when he chuckled.
“Yeah, believe it or not, I do. My brothers,” he paused, glancing away, “I have two older brothers. They think I’m getting too old for the life I live but I’m only twenty-five, not fifty. I like to travel. I like being outdoors and doing things other people think are scary or impossible. They think I have a death wish or that I’m just irresponsible. They want me to settle down and make the kind of life for myself they have.”
“Get married you mean?” She found herself asking.
“One of them is married. The other is just a workaholic. The fact that I have no desire to be either of those things frustrates the hell out of them.” He shrugged, “So yeah, I get wanting to be your own person and make your own path, especially if you’ve had those that came before you try to say you should just be happy following theirs.”
Ashtyn stared at him in shocked silence. She hadn’t expected his easy acceptance of why she’d run from what seemed to everyone else to be a perfect match. She wasn’t sure why. Nothing this man had done or said from the moment she approached him in that alleyway had been the thing she’d have expected.
He wasn’t at all one of her father’s yes men, and he was about as different from Aaron as night was from day.
He’d said he liked to travel, something she’d always dreamed of doing. From the way he made it sound, he was a thrill-seeker and she’d run out of that church because she’d wanted an adventure. She wanted to do the things that scared her, the things that her father had always told her were impossible for a girl of her standing. Just this once she’d wanted to be reckless and irresponsible and she’d run out of that church and straight into the arms of a man named Tyler St. James, a perfect stranger that also happened to be perfectly suited to deliver on her desires.
“Ashtyn. Ashtyn.” He was snapping his fingers in front of her face and she smacked his hand away.
“Stop that.”
“You zoned out on me. I thought you were going into shock or something.”
“Why on earth would I be going into shock?” She pursed her lips and glared at him.
“Because for the first time in your life you did something your daddy isn’t going to like?”
She hardened her features and shook her head, “First off, don’t call him my daddy. It sounds weird coming out of your mouth. Second, I’m a grown woman and I made a choice, one that he’ll just have to live with.”
“Uh-huh.” Tyler nodded though it was clear he wasn’t agreeing, “I’m guessing you didn’t have this conversation with your dad before you came running out of that church like a bat out of Hell then?”
“God no.”
“Figured.” Tyler sighed and glanced around the parking lot, “So… now what? You want me to take you home?”
“No!” She took a step back in horror, “No, I can’t go home. That’s the first place they’re going to look for me.”
“And?”
“And…” She bit her lip when he did that thing where he raised one eyebrow again, “Well, I’m not ready to go home yet.”
“Okay, so where do you want to go?”
Ashtyn stared at him. She took in his slacks and crinkled white dress shirt layered underneath his suit jacket. She noticed the dark tendrils of a tattoo peeking out of the collar of his shirt. She catalogued his stocky, muscular body and remembered the way his dimples flashed wickedly when he smiled. And then she looked at the motorcycle he was so casually leaning against as if it were an extension of his own body.
It had been a sign. She was sure of it. She’d needed to get away and there it had been. There he had been. An item crossed off her bucket list, just like that. As if she’d thought about it and it had happened. No, that wasn’t right. She hadn’t just thought about it, she’d taken a chance. She’d made a choice and then she made it happen.
Tyler rubbed his jaw and shot her a wary look, “Ashtyn? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I know where I want you to take me.”
“Sure thing, princess. You just tell me which direction we’re heading. You want to go to your father’s house or...”
“No!” The word came o
ut high and strained and she forced herself to clear her throat and try again, “No. My friend, Kelsey, is dealing with my parents for me.”
And thank god for Kelsey. Ashtyn would owe her forever after today. She’d left her best friend behind to clean up her mess and though she’d cleaned up plenty of Kelsey’s in their nearly two decades of friendship, she’d never had to deal with an irate groom left at the altar.
“So…?” Tyler looked like he was ready to dump her on just about anyone to be rid of her which was not a good thing. “You don’t want to go home, you don’t want to go to your parents’ house. I’m guessing going to the Mayor’s home is out of the question. Do you need me to get you to a hotel or do you want to hang out at my place for a little while, just until things cool down or…”
“I want you to take me to Vegas.” she blurted.
She expected Tyler to give her that look of confusion again. She half expected him to sneer at her and accuse her of being bossy and entitled and she supposed she couldn’t have even blamed him for it this time. What she hadn’t expected was for him to burst out laughing.
Ashtyn frowned.
Tyler tipped his head back and laughed at the sky. He laughed long and loud. The sound was sort of sexy actually. Low and deep, husky and full-bodied, she wasn’t sure that she’d ever heard anyone laugh so openly and so completely. Tyler laughed until he finally leaned over and put his hands on his knees, dropping his head down and shaking it as he struggled to catch his breath.
“Are you about done laughing at me?” Ashtyn hissed, hands on her hips.
“I’m not sure.” Tyler tilted his head up from between his legs and grinned, “Tell me again that you want me to take you to Vegas and we’ll see if it still sounds as absolutely fucking crazy as it sounded the first time.”
She pouted, “It’s not crazy.”
“It is.” Tyler wiped at his face as he struggled to stand back upright. “It really is. You want me to take you to Vegas? You didn’t even know my name ten minutes ago.”
“But…” She tried only to have him cut her off.
“And you want to what, take a road trip with me? On a motorcycle? That’s like a three, four-day trip at least. I have a life and a job and you expect me to drop everything and chauffer your cute little ass across the country so you can… do what exactly? Why the hell do you even want to go to Vegas if you just ran out on your wedding?”
“Just… because I’ve never been and I want to go!” She stomped her foot and Tyler laughed again.
“God, you sound just like the whiny, overindulged, shallow girl I expected you to be.” Tyler shook his head.
“I am not that girl.” Ashtyn lost her tough girl façade, because that was all it really was anyway and let her absolute vulnerability show, “At least, I don’t want to be that girl. I don’t want to live inside the box or play by my father’s rules anymore. I don’t want to settle down and follow the path they laid out for me. From what you told me, I thought you of all people might understand that. You said you liked adventure and I’m in desperate need of one, Tyler. I have a bucket list and I need to do this. So will you help me? I should have added please, I realize that.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face and shook his head, “Ashtyn, this is a terrible idea.”
“Aren’t those the best kinds?” She tried for a winning smile.
“No, because you’re not this person. You’re just a rich girl with cold feet running away from home. You’ll come to your senses before you even get out of town.”
She took a little bit of offense to that but she tried not to show it, “We’re already out of town, Tyler. Look around, we’re not in Nashville anymore, Toto.”
“Close enough.” he snorted. “Besides, I only live a few miles from here.”
“Good. That’s perfect. I’ll run into the store over there and buy something to change into and then we can swing by your place and you can pack a bag and then we can hit the road.”
He pursed his lips, “It’s not happening Ashtyn.”
“Sure it is. I have to get out of this dress, like now. It’s ruined and it’s attracting attention. I’m going to… shit.” She frowned as she looked for her purse. “I don’t have my clutch.”
“See. You don’t even have your wallet with you, how exactly are you planning to get to Vegas?”
“Ooh. I forgot.” She reached inside her bra, causing Tyler’s eyes to widen and when she pulled out the crumpled bills she grinned triumphantly. “I grabbed these when I ran. I thought I might need to pay a cabbie.”
“I don’t think that’s going to get you to Vegas, princess.”
“I’ll figure the rest out. Right now, I’m going in that store over there and I’m buying some clean, normal clothes. When I get back, we can discuss where to go from here.”
“Home. You’re going home, Ashtyn.” he called after her but she ignored him.
He would come around, he had to. She might not know him well but he’d revealed something important about himself while they were talking. He was adventurous and he didn’t play by the rules but more than that, he was protective. He’d been intent on reminding her of all the ways this could have gone bad if he hadn’t been someone that wanted to keep her safe. But he was. Which meant he wouldn’t let her traipse off into the night alone or leave her behind. She could trust that he wasn’t going to go riding off the moment she went inside the store so she waved over her shoulder and headed towards the Target that was at one end of the strip mall they’d pulled into.
He’d come around to the idea while she did some shopping. She’d already figured it all out. She hadn’t really been thinking when she’d run out on her wedding. She’d ridden off on a motorcycle with a complete stranger without giving a thought to her safety. But now that she’d had time to think it all through, she knew exactly what was going to happen next.
Tyler was going to take her to Vegas and along the way he was going to help her check off as many bucket-list items as she could because what was the point of running out on her wedding if she didn’t start living right here and right now.
4
Tyler watched the big white marshmallow containing the teensy little woman that had become a gigantic pain in his ass, disappear through the sliding doors and into Target. His eyes stayed on the spot even after she was out of sight. He couldn’t believe the woman had just traipsed into a Target wearing a dirty, wrinkled wedding gown that probably cost as much as his motorcycle.
She was crazy. That was the only logical conclusion, certifiably nuts. She’d run out on her wedding. She’d gotten on the back of a motorcycle with a complete stranger. Then she’d asked him to take her on a road trip to Las Vegas of all places. She was crazy and entitled and completely ridiculous and yet, he found himself smiling as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and made the call he’d been putting off since the moment he stopped the bike.
He liked her. He hadn’t expected to, but there was just something about her. She was stronger than he’d imagined. Feisty and determined, and yeah, crazy too, but in a way that made him want to laugh and go along with whatever crazy scheme she came up with just to see what sort of trouble she’d get herself into next.
The phone rang in his ear once, twice, three times and he was almost convinced that it was going to go to voicemail when he heard the familiar hard voice on the other end of the line.
“Ty? Is that you?”
“Hey Blake, yeah it’s me. Look…”
“Where the hell have you been?” Blake cut him off with a growl, “I can’t believe you bailed on this wedding. I went to bat for you with Vaughn but…”
“Hey! I didn’t bail.” Tyler cut in. “And if Vaughn has a problem with me, that’s between me and him. He’s my brother, I don’t need you going to bat for me.”
Tyler turned away from the storefront and glared out at the passing cars on the highway. He wanted to throw his phone into the oncoming traffic and watch it burst into a thousand tiny pieces. Nobody ha
d the power to make him angry the way his oldest brother did and it wasn’t even Vaughn on the other end of the phone. It was just the mere mention of his brother from Blake and the reminder that of course Vaughn hadn’t trusted him to take the job seriously. Vaughn didn’t trust Tyler to replace the toilet paper in the All Saints Security office bathrooms.
“Are you really yelling at me right now?” Blake snapped.
“I’m sorry, man. I’m just sick of Vaughn undermining me.” Tyler forced a deep calming breath.
“Focus, Ty. We have bigger issues than your brother right now. This wedding is a fucking disaster.”
There was the sound of someone shouting on the other end of the phone and Tyler tried to make out what was being said. The traffic was too loud on his end. He heard Blake shout something back about securing a captain and wondered if he was talking about Aaron Laughlin, a.k.a Captain America, a.k.a the man that Ashtyn had left at the altar.
“Tyler, you there?” Blake came back on the line.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Good, I need your help with the bride’s mother. Take the ex-Mrs. Echols back to the Senator’s house and wait with her until we have word on her daughter. Isaac is dealing with Laughlin and Vaughn is busy with the Senator right now so I need to start looking for the girl.”
“No.” Tyler shook his head even though Blake couldn’t see him. “No, I’m not there. I meant, I’m here like, I’m here, on the phone still.”
“Oh.” Blake paused, “So you’re not here? You did bail on the wedding?”
“No, I mean yes, I mean… damnit, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say that you’re here to help. We’ve lost the bride, Ty. She’s missing.”
“She’s not missing.” Tyler told him.
“Yes, she is.” Blake argued, “Her best friend thinks she ran but the Senator swears someone must have taken her because she’d never do something so reckless.”