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Runaway Bride: A laugh out loud funny and feel good rom com
Mary Jayne Baker
A heart-warming novel about love and new beginnings, this is the perfect book for spring!Here comes the bride… but how long can she hide?When Kitty Clayton flees her wedding with no money, no bank card and no phone, her life seems worryingly futureless. All she knows is, she’d rather sleep on the streets than go back home to cheating Ethan.After picking her up hitch-hiking, widowed children’s author Jack Duffy takes Kitty under his wing, looking out for her until she gets back on her feet. And it’s not long before the two grow close…But with Jack struggling to recover from the guilt he feels over his wife’s death and Kitty refusing to face up to the problems she’s running away from at home, will the two ever manage to share a happily ever after?
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2018
Copyright © Mary Jayne Baker 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018.
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com (https://www.shutterstock.com)
Mary Jayne Baker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008258337
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008258320
Version: 2018-01-26
Table of Contents
Cover (#u18c7a910-3f02-5f01-a4ba-5a2b23eba14a)
Title Page (#uf94063ac-a9df-56f3-a97f-47c765f1897e)
Copyright (#u66491c98-01d3-57b3-b3b0-1f890fbc9d3d)
Dedication (#u95fa2886-f49e-557d-8d55-975c37a98660)
Chapter 1 (#u6f44cf5f-2cb0-53a1-b458-71b008db6439)
Chapter 2 (#u26326059-205c-511c-a786-2f5b418f3a73)
Chapter 3 (#u0691d3bd-4730-5a9d-bb21-762645c529f3)
Chapter 4 (#uaf40d958-e0e4-5de8-9d21-7ce556fb40e2)
Chapter 5 (#u1d6daa5f-7f2e-5b5d-861c-cf531a929fa1)
Chapter 6 (#u41675ad1-a83c-5853-9383-7fa746c59a42)
Chapter 7 (#u5e0830ec-c394-553e-a317-beecac76bb58)
Chapter 8 (#u06e02f1e-3c7b-5faf-b05b-3887e3ef0115)
Chapter 9 (#u0ee26415-634f-55ec-92d1-2a4358d08568)
Chapter 10 (#uf2d16845-782f-5453-abc5-c5278222451d)
Chapter 11 (#u2c4dec21-4379-55a8-9f89-064c7112b7a6)
Chapter 12 (#u86a54854-a65c-5cb1-966b-d81f63ce94e3)
Chapter 13 (#u9e26bd75-a94b-50dd-9e78-76f5aff5ea2c)
Chapter 14 (#u4a720cef-2222-5a5e-85ee-dd40fa479e92)
Chapter 15 (#ue8608903-fe27-5c8a-8796-82fc21cc5b34)
Chapter 16 (#u247a5190-3005-5143-8bad-30be430d73c7)
Chapter 17 (#u823aeca8-1cbb-5c3e-a66e-bce014942b6a)
Chapter 18 (#u467ba514-1f45-5869-a617-69d5c3af26a8)
Chapter 19 (#u6c819328-a516-5406-8894-9e46054fb831)
Chapter 20 (#ufe4c4ec7-f248-57c6-a930-ce2aad959fa5)
Chapter 21 (#u004b49d1-25e2-5125-aafb-a477d047c5a6)
Chapter 22 (#ua75aefdf-6c32-51b8-bf8f-e38fcb43c3f2)
Chapter 23 (#u299bfb31-0972-50ef-a4df-7075556dcc83)
Chapter 24 (#u8b51267e-18a5-5201-ba84-e237cf5813c5)
Chapter 25 (#u38ac7776-fc02-555f-8e81-a5174021ab2f)
Chapter 26 (#u92ed2b00-c8df-558d-bae4-cbaf425b83d9)
Chapter 27 (#u38a03c7f-86a1-5ce5-94a2-3bb01a34937f)
Chapter 28 (#u6d62e50a-733f-5d2c-9cb3-5b5ad0daa3f8)
Chapter 29 (#u1b11b229-ed5c-5372-b8fe-01c5d2cd1ad3)
Chapter 30 (#ud8e8aa62-b819-5ee8-a78c-26873d92b5fc)
Chapter 31 (#u111edcf3-8ad3-5b50-a69d-d6534c74743a)
Chapter 32 (#u88c10ff3-9e71-5b65-9eff-0b49680eec4a)
Chapter 33 (#u9ba079f4-8d2a-5978-aca3-d446decab5c8)
Chapter 34 (#u4d1c0e75-63a8-58f2-8e9a-de013fb51119)
Chapter 35 (#u84f1fff1-9c33-5390-a7c4-4de3ef2f6cd8)
Chapter 36 (#u3e9c8223-1487-5a2c-8e43-d1889afa0bc9)
Chapter 37 (#uc52a5e8e-9ddb-5fe7-989e-bc5b0b39c94f)
Chapter 38 (#u0881ebd0-a038-5ebb-b9da-06d5d13fd355)
Acknowledgements (#ucbde0a4b-1018-5898-94ba-6e331d7ed4d9)
Also by Mary Jayne Baker (#u53cd6a45-b0f1-5c33-86c6-2a067b169e34)
About the Author (#u2d171c73-9036-5d5e-a365-81a9ac106aad)
About HarperImpulse (#u36d0cb14-1494-55b9-95dc-89fc85f4e674)
About the Publisher (#ud8545e9f-a121-5443-951d-177942a73e72)
To the Leeds/Cumbrian branch of the Brahams – my dad Angus, stepmum Debra and siblings Joe and Lauren – without whom this book would never have been written.
Chapter 1 (#ue6f429e3-3d8c-5e0b-b594-8af9a731feee)
By the time I reached the main road, my lungs were sandpaper-dry. My hair whipped painfully around my face, and the heel of my left foot was bleeding.
It was one hell of a start to married life.
I’d been married, ooh, around three hours. I’d been running for the best part of the last one. Running with no aim or direction, no one in pursuit, but running like my immortal soul depended on it. Desperate to get as far as possible from Ethan and all the rest of them.
One foot in front of the other, Kitty. Eyes on the horizon. No turning back, no giving in… not this time.
Not this time.
But no matter how I fixed my eyes on the horizon, where the dusky satsuma sun had just started to sink behind the intimidating ridge of the fells, the hacking in my chest was bound to defeat me eventually. At last I slowed my sprint to a jog, then to a walk, and, when I couldn’t bear another second’s agony, I stopped.
I gripped the drystone wall that ran alongside the road in bleached knuckles, struggling for oxygen. Short, panting breaths surged painfully up through my windpipe. With my free hand, I clutched my stomach. I could feel bile rising up my gullet, the threat of another vomiting episode as anger and grief battled for mouthfuls of my sanity, but I willed it back. I needed to keep calm. I needed to keep focused. And above all, I needed to keep moving.
I slumped down onto the tarmac and allowed myself the indulgence of another round of angry, puzzled tears. Bewildered motorists stared at me as they whizzed by, but they didn’t stop. Well, why would they? They had their own affairs to see to.
There was a part of me that didn’t want to keep moving. That part of me wanted to curl up and die, right there by the side of the road. The throbbing in my gut, the images whirling in my brain, were almost enough to paralyse me. But deep inside, underneath the layers of taffeta and rage, some sort of survival instinct was fighting to make itself heard. Push on, it said. Get away, far away, and then there’ll be time to mourn.
I don’t think I’d been there long. I could’ve been wrong, it could’ve been hours; my head was spinning so much that time didn’t really seem to exist. But I think it was about ten minutes later when a sunshine-orange VW campervan, one of those cutesy-pie ’60s numbers with the bug front, pulled up beside me.
‘Are you all right there, lass?’ the driver asked, leaning out of his window to examine me.
Hastily I wiped my eyes.
‘Yeah. Sorry, I, um – my car got towed.’
The dark-haired man cocked an eyebrow. ‘What, your car got towed and they just left you here?’
There was the lilt of an Irish accent nestling among the deep, gentle tones. It sounded reassuring. Made me think of my nan.
‘Er, yeah,’ I said, wincing at the obvious lie.
Great start, Kitty. Keep it up.
The man didn’t look convinced, but he refrained from commenting. ‘Well I can’t just leave you here. You get a lot of boy racers down these side roads, you know. Where’re you going?’
‘Anywhere.’ I grimaced. ‘I mean, Wastwater. I’m going to Wastwater. To a… um… gala dinner.’ I glanced down at my fetching wellies, colour-coordinated with the off-the-shoulder green taffeta ballgown I was wearing. ‘For farmers.’
Gala dinner for farmers. Of course that’s where I was going. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? Oh, this just got better and better…
‘Are you a farmer?’ the man asked.
‘No. Just, er, trying to fit in.’
‘None of my business,’ he said generously. ‘Come on, hop in. I’m heading to the Lakes anyway, I’ll drop you off.’
I hesitated. I’d never hitch-hiked before and I couldn’t suppress a feeling of danger – stranger danger, that fear that’s bred into you in your schooldays. Don’t get into cars with strange men, Kitty. Don’t let them give you sweets and just say no when they ask if you want to get into their van to see their puppies. This guy could be anyone, couldn’t he? Offering me a lift – what was in it for him?
I could hear my mum’s voice in the back of my mind. Never trust a boy who offers you a favour, angel. Men always expect to get paid…
But Mum wasn’t here, and this man looked friendly enough to me. He was handsome in a scruffy sort of way, with jet-black hair that curled onto his neck, long stubble and dark brown eyes. I think in the end, though, it was the smile, a lopsided, open grin, that convinced me I could trust him. That, and the fact I was seriously out of options.
The instinct driving me now was to get as far from home as possible, and I was desperate enough to take some serious risks, even with my own self – at least, whatever of it I still had left to give a damn about. A large chunk of me was some miles away back in Elden, my home town in the Yorkshire Dales, lying in a blackened, smoking puddle at Ethan’s feet. Getting into a car with a stranger didn’t feel like nearly the scariest thing I’d had to deal with today.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, walking round to the passenger side and climbing in.
‘Jack Duffy,’ the man said, holding out his hand to me.
I wondered for a second whether to give a fake name, but decided against it. I might be on the run, but I wasn’t exactly James Bond. Who, come to think of it, was a bit shit when it came to cover stories, giving out his real name so often he’d actually managed to make it a catchphrase.
‘Clayton. Kitty Clayton,’ I said in true Bond style, shaking Jack’s hand.
