Read Project: Runaway Bride for Free Online Page A

hated her, given their last interaction. The one where she’d thanked him for being so nice and showing her a good time, but told him she didn’t think things would work out between them and that they shouldn’t see each other anymore.
    He’d always had the softest brown eyes, like melted chocolate or a big cup of cappuccino. From the first moment she’d locked gazes with him, those eyes had told her he was strong and kind and trustworthy.
    Not exactly thoughts she should have been having about a man other than her fiancé, but tell that to her heart or her gut or whatever else was screaming at her louder than her IQ.
    It was why she’d broken things off with Paul the first time around. Her attraction to Reid had become too overwhelming, driving her almost inexorably into his arms. She wasn’t the type to carry on an affair while she was engaged to another man, though, and knew that she couldn’t continue to feign interest in her upcoming nuptials when her heart was no longer in it. But once she was free to explore her feelings with Reid—and he’d been all too happy to reciprocate—the intensity had scared her.
    Maybe that was why she’d run away. Not from her wedding, but from him. Gone running back to Paul, pretending her time with Reid had never happened. Because he was a man she could all too easily fall in love with.
    As far as everyone else was concerned, she’d still been promised to Paul all along.
    She hadn’t known how to tell her parents that she’d called off the wedding after they’d put so much time, money and emotion into planning the event. Not to mention how much they’d been looking forward to having Paul as a son-in-law.
    She’d never worked up the courage to tell her sisters, either. Because then she would have had to tell them about Reid, and she hadn’t quite been ready for that discussion. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Lily and Zoe with the information but simply that she didn’t yet know how to put her confusing, jumbled-up emotions into words.
    Then things had gotten a bit too serious with Reid and begun to scare her. So what had she done? She’d tucked tail and run. Something she realized was becoming a nasty habit.
    Or maybe she was just unlucky in love and would mess up any relationship she got into. In which case, why not stick with the status quo?
    No one except Reid and Paul had known she’d broken the engagement, and Paul had never given up trying to get her to change her mind. He’d apologized again for losing his temper with her. Agreed that commuting back and forth between Connecticut and New York was a compromise he’d be willing to make, at least for the first few years of their marriage. And he’d assured her that if designing with her sisters was what she enjoyed, then of course he wanted her to continue her partnership in Zaccaro Fashions.
    It was everything she’d ever wanted to hear from him, and falling back into the role of his fiancée was so easy.... Why not simply go through with it after all?
    It had all made so much sense at the time.
    Fate, however, seemed to be working against her.
    She had turned her back on Reid with every intention of doing what everybody expected and settling down with Paul....
    Boom! The stick had turned blue and she’d discovered she was pregnant with Reid’s child.
    She’d run away from her wedding to avoid marrying a man who wasn’t the father of her child....
    Boom! Her sisters had sent out the private-sector version of the National Guard to track her down.
    She’d snuck off to her family’s lake house in Vermont to hide out for a while....
    Boom! The very man she’d least wanted to deal with was the one to find her. The one she’d suddenly found herself alone with in the wilderness.
    There was a message in there somewhere. A lesson. A cruel, cruel irony.
    And no matter how much she might wish otherwise, she didn’t think Reid would be leaving any time soon. Never mind that he’d done his job—he’d found