Free The Runaway Bride by Noelle Marchand

touched his lips. “You look like you’ve been assigned a fate worse than death.”
    She nodded slowly. He seemed to think so. Why shouldn’t she? “Maybe I have.”
    His jaw clenched, and he stared at her for a long minute, then stood. “I think I’d better go. Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Wilkins.”
    “You’re quite welcome.”
    “Goodbye, Lorelei.” He couldn’t even seem to make himself look at her before he turned away to search for his hat.
    Once the door closed behind him and Caroline rejoined them in the parlor, Lorelei let the silence close in thick around them. Both of her parents were waiting for her reaction. It took a few moments to gather her thoughts. “Maybe I should go to California after all. If I leave, this might all blow over.”
    “And leave Sean to deal with this alone?” her mother questioned with obvious disapproval.
    Richard sat down on the settee beside her and took her hand in both of his. “Running away is what got you into this problem in the first place. It won’t solve anything. Besides, didn’t you just tell me this morning that you wanted to prove the town wrong about you? This is your chance.”
    “No, there has to be a way out,” she muttered desperately. “We could hire a detective. We could find Miss Elmira.”
    “To prove that she left you to travel for several days alone?” Caroline shook her head sorrowfully. “Darling, there is no other way.”
    “No other way,” Lorelei breathed, then glanced at the door Sean had walked out of moments before. “He’ll hate me for sure now. If not now, then in ten or twenty years.”
    Richard frowned. “Why would he hate you?”
    “I’ve taken his every chance at happiness, just as he’s taken mine. Oh, how will we bear it?” Her parents protested, but she tuned them out with a quick shake of her head and fled to her room. Her desperate gaze flew to her large window. Opening it, a warm breeze washed over her along with the scent of the wild roses that she only bothered to tame when the mood struck her.
    She knelt before the window and stared down into the garden. It would be so easy to climb down the trellis, slip into the night and leave her troubles behind—but she’d tried that before. Her father was right. It hadn’t worked. In fact, it had only made her problems worse. No, this time she would have to take responsibility for what she had done instead of trying to run from it. Marrying Sean, a man who could never love her, was a high price to pay for her impulsive mistake, but what choice did she have?
    She’d show Sean and the whole town. She’d see the courtship and the marriage through to the bitter end, but she wouldn’t be foolish about it. She’d keep her wits about her. She wouldn’t let any remnants of her childish feelings make her silly enough to love a man who would never love her back. She’d end up chasing after something she’d never be able to catch. The only way to keep her heart safe would be to keep even the slightest fragment of love from taking root. That’s exactly what she planned to do.
    * * *
    Sean closed the Wilkinses’ gate behind him with a decided thud, then stuffed his hat on his head and clenched his jaw. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that after all this time he was actually going to court Lorelei Wilkins. If this was some sort of divine joke, he didn’t find it funny. He shook his head. “This is not part of the plan.”
    He’d planned to settle down in the next few years but not like this. Not to her. He’d wanted to find a stable, mature, sensible wife he’d be able to count on. Lorelei was flighty, impetuous and a dozen other things he’d wanted to avoid in a life partner. She was the one woman in the world he was sure he could never trust. The woman who’d trampled on his heart and his best friend’s. She’d single-handedly managed to take his stable, carefully thought-out life and turn it into complete upheaval. His hands slipped into clenched