Chapter 3
PEYTON
I stand rooted on the concrete, watching the motorcycle’s taillights disappear around the corner, and scream after him.
The sound tears from my throat, raw and furious, but the wind snatches it before it can reach him. Not that it matters. He’s gone, leaving me alone with only the smell of burned rubber and my rage.
Another chilly gust blows on me from behind and whisks my fury away, draining me.
My legs give out.
I sink onto the curb, my dress pooling around me like a deflated parachute.
The concrete is shockingly cold against my ass even through the many layers of fabric, but I don’t move.
I try to hug my knees to my chest, but the gown is too bulky, the boning too rigid, and I end up clutching fistfuls of dirty tulle instead.
I’m tempted to give up. To lie down and succumb to hypothermia wearing the world’s most expensive straitjacket.
My obituary will be humiliating.
Runaway Bride Found Frozen After Fleeing Nuptials, Arguing with Hot Motorcyclist, and Eventually Succumbing to the Curb.
Matt’s family will come dancing on my grave.
Another vicious gust of wind slams into me. It whips a few escaped curls across my face and makes my teeth click together in a violent, uncontrollable clatter. I should get up, keep moving, find shelter.
But the will to do anything beyond sitting here and becoming one with the pavement is fading fast.
Then I think of him.
That reckless, arrogant, infuriatingly handsome jerk with his leather jacket and his stupid, perfect cheekbones and his condescending tone.
Who does he think he is, calling me crazy?
I’m not crazy. I’m cold and tired, and my feet are bleeding, and I almost died because he was driving like the town was his personal racetrack.
A new heat burns through my chest, warming me from the inside out, pumping enough adrenaline through my system for me to stand up. I check my phone. The battery is down to 5 percent. I plonk it into my corset and gather my skirts in both arms like I’m wading through a river.
I wish I could say I march toward my destination with purpose and dignity, but the truth is, I still hobble. Each step pure agony.
I make it fifty yards before a black luxury sedan glides down Main Street like a mirage, gold lettering on its side gleaming under the streetlights: Rockwood Resort.
I wave my arms, nearly losing my balance. The car slows and pulls to a stop beside me. The driver, a middle-aged man in a crisp uniform, gets out and opens the door for me with such professional courtesy I want to weep.
I fall into the backseat, the leather blessedly soft and warm. The door closes with a satisfying thump, sealing me in a cocoon of climate-controlled heaven.
The driver settles behind the wheel and glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Where should I take you, ma’am?”
I blink at him, confused by the question. Don’t hotel shuttles only go to the hotel?
“The Rockwood Resort, please?” I say, my voice uncertain and raspy. Am I getting a sore throat?
He looks equally perplexed by my reply, but nods and pulls away from the curb without further comment.
The drive takes less than five minutes, but it’s the most luxurious five minutes of my life. The heater blasts warm air at my face, and I angle the vents toward my bare shoulders, closing my eyes as feeling returns to my extremities.
Pins and needles prickle through my fingers, my toes, the tip of my nose. The warmth is almost painful after so long in the cold, but I don’t care. I’d take painful heat over comfortable numbness any day.
The resort glitters into view through the rain-speckled window. Valets in matching uniforms rush between expensive cars parked under a grand portico, and music and laughter filter past the main doors, audible even from inside the sedan.
Behind the massive glass walls of the lobby, elegant guests in black tie mingle, their champagne flutes sparkling under the huge chandeliers.
The car stops at the entrance. Without killing the engine, the driver steps out to open my door.
The cold hits me like a slap, sharp enough to make me gasp.
I shimmy out, taking my skirts with me. Being on my feet again is unbearably painful despite the cushion of the red carpet leading into the lobby.
After three steps on the plush runner, I can’t take it anymore. I stop, brace a hand against a marble column, and yank off one shoe, then the other.
I make a beeline for the check-in desk, the offending stilettos dangling from my fingers, my filthy train dragging behind me. When I run out of carpet, the cool, polished marble floor is heavenly against my raw, throbbing feet.
Every head in the lobby turns to stare. A woman in a sequined dress clutches her literal pearls.
A man in a tuxedo chokes on his champagne.
Conversations pause. I ignore everyone, lifting my chin and limping toward the massive reception desk like I own the place.
Or at least, like I’m not about to be thrown out of it.
The concierge watches my approach with the neutrality of someone trained not to judge, though his eyes widen as I get closer.
He’s young, mid-twenties, with styled brown hair and a name tag that reads Adam.
His gaze flicks from my face to my bare feet to the trail dragging behind me and back up again.
I drop my shoes on the marble counter with a decisive thunk. “Good evening. I need a room for one night, please.”
“Evening, ma’am.” His voice is smooth and professional. “Do you have a reservation with us?”
“No.”
“And how will you be paying?” His gaze flicks to my dress, perhaps searching for a purse I do not have.
“With my phone.” I gesture at my bodice.
Adam blushes and looks away, typing into his computer with a placid expression. “May I see a form of identification, please?”
“Yeah, sure.” I fish my phone out of its boning prison and scroll through my photos. “Would a picture of my driver’s license work?”
“It would.”
The screen goes dark.
I stare at the black glass, my deranged reflection blinking back at me. Turns out my bridal makeup isn’t as waterproof as advertised.
I’d laugh, but I’m afraid I might break down crying if I let my emotions loose. I clear my throat instead, and in my most unaffected voice, ask, “Do you have a charger?”
Adam’s demeanor doesn’t change, but a note of apologetic firmness tinges his tone when he says, “Chargers are available for hotel guests only.”
My hand clenches around the dead phone. “I’m obviously checking in,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I understand, ma’am, but I can’t check you in without proper identification or a verified payment method. And I can’t lend hotel property to non-guests.” His smile is sympathetic in a way that makes me want to throw my useless phone at his head. “Hotel policy.”
I’m about to scream. A full-throated, horror-movie scream that will get me escorted out by security and land me in the local paper—when a voice cuts through the lobby noise behind me.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He sounds irritated. And disturbingly familiar.
I turn.
The reckless rider is standing a few feet away, almost unrecognizable in a tuxedo—or most of one. The jacket is impeccably tailored, sitting perfectly across his broad shoulders. But the pants underneath are wrong: too short and in an off-shade of black that doesn’t match the top.
That strip of sock and ankle the pants don’t cover would be comical if his expression wasn’t so thunderous.
His dark hair is disheveled, falling across his forehead in that artfully messy way I noticed before. And his cold gray eyes, intense enough to match his arrogance, flare with aggravation.
“Did you follow me?”
“Why would I follow you? To get run over a second time?”
His jaw tightens. He takes a step closer, limping slightly. I hope his leg hurts as much as my feet do.
“Then what are you doing in my hotel?”
His hotel?
I look at him—at the ill-fitting pants, the aristocratic bone structure, the entitled set of his shoulders—and then at the gold lettering above the reception desk that reads Rockwood Resort, and finally at the R mirrored on the monogram on his cufflinks.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I’m cold. I’m exhausted. My feet are destroyed, my phone is dead, and I have nowhere else to go.
And this cocky, rude, annoyingly attractive man owns the only warm bed within hobbling distance. And he’s looking at me like I’m a stain on his pristine lobby floor he needs to wipe out.