How to Romance a Runaway Bride Read online

  He frowned. “For just one person?”

  Allegra sighed. Mightily. “Yes.”

  He nodded but still managed to look utterly perplexed. Too bad. “May I ask the name on the reservation?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “No reservation?” His frown deepened. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any single rooms available without a reservation.”

  This day kept getting better and better. “Fine. I’ll take a double.”

  But the desk clerk wasn’t any more accommodating. “I’m afraid we don’t have any double rooms available either.”

  Allegra’s heart started beating hard again. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Fine. I’ll take the honeymoon suite.” Desperate times called for desperate measures, and these were indeed desperate times.

  The hotel clerk shrugged. He was really beginning to get on Allegra’s nerves. “That room is booked, as well. We’re completely full. Without a reservation, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Full? Full? As in there’s not a room of any kind available?” It couldn’t be true. Where on earth would she go? What was she supposed to do? Go marching back into her wedding to ask her erstwhile fiancé for a ride to the airport?

  Even if the hotel clerk took pity on her and came up with a room, she had no way to pay for it. She’d walked out of the ceremony with nothing but her bridal bouquet. She wasn’t even sure where her purse—and her wallet full of credit cards—was at the moment.

  Why had she agreed to get married in Manhattan?

  She should have insisted on a nice, simple ceremony in Cambridge, where she and Spencer actually lived. How had she let herself get talked into coming back here?

  Because Spencer was a politician, that’s why. He’d wanted a big, splashy wedding, one that would look good in all the newspapers. A grand show. Allegra just hadn’t realized she was nothing but a prop.

  How could she have been so monumentally stupid?

  “We’re completely booked.” The clerk gave her a sympathetic smile, and something inside Allegra died just a little. “Can I do anything else for you? Call a car, perhaps?”

  Behind her, someone chimed in. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Allegra spun around and found herself face-to-face with Zander’s mother. Emily Wilde wasn’t exactly the first person she wanted to chat with after the oddly uncomfortable encounter she’d just had with Zander. But it was definitely preferable to talking to Zander himself. “Mrs. Wilde, hello.”

  “Since when do you call me Mrs. Wilde? I’m Emily, remember?” The older woman gave her a warm smile. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just on my way out since it seems the birthday party has ended, and I overheard.”

  “I was trying to get a room, but it seems the hotel is booked.”

  “Winter in New York is always a busy time of year. But, of course, you know that.” Emily tilted her head. “Isn’t your birthday right around the corner? I seem to remember it being during the snowy season.”

  Indeed it was. Just two weeks away. Allegra’s thirtieth, which meant if she’d ever made that ancient deal with Zander, they still had fourteen days to make good on it. Not that they’d made any such arrangement. And not that she’d ever in a million years marry the man.

  When had he turned into such a grump? And what was he doing running a hotel? The Zander she knew wanted to run the family business someday. The Wilde School of Dance. She’d have been less surprised to see him starring in a Broadway play than strutting around wearing a business suit, surrounded by minions.

  Zander Wilde’s profession should be the least of your worries at the moment. You’re homeless, and the only article of clothing you own is a wedding gown.

  “Allegra, you don’t look well.” Emily pressed a hand to Allegra’s forehead. “You need to lie down, dear.”

  Allegra nodded. Emily was right. She’d never needed to rest so much in her life. She felt like she’d been running for the better part of fourteen years. In a way, she supposed she had. But it wasn’t as if she could just curl up on the sofa in the hotel lobby.

  Could she?

  No, of course she couldn’t. She’d probably get in trouble. Or even arrested. She let out a hysterical laugh. Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to this horrible day? To have Zander call the cops on her.

  Zander Wilde, who thought she’d been pining away for him since the day she’d left town.

  “You’ll stay with me,” Emily said as matter-of-factly as if she’d just offered Allegra a stick of gum rather than a roof over her head.

  “What?” Allegra shook her head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t...”

  But Emily had already removed her coat and was wrapping it around Allegra’s shoulders as she led her toward the revolving door. “Of course you can. How many afternoons did you come home with us after dance class when you were a girl?”

  More than Allegra could count. “But things are different now.” She slowed to a stop two feet from the exit. “Emily, I can’t. I’m afraid that might upset Zander. We had a disagreement a few minutes ago.”

  “I heard.” Emily nodded. “Half of Manhattan heard, actually.”

  Fabulous. Just fabulous.

  “It doesn’t matter what Zander thinks. It’s my house, not his.” Emily gave Allegra’s waist a gentle squeeze. “And if you don’t mind my saying, it doesn’t really look like you have a lot of options.”

  She didn’t. Zero, in fact.

  “Allegra, dear. I can’t leave you here all alone. I owe it to your mom and dad to see that you’re taken care of.” Emily’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Come on home.”

  At the mention of her parents, the last shreds of Allegra’s resistance crumbled. She didn’t have the strength to fight the past. Not tonight. Not now.

  Come on home.

  She wanted nothing more than to go home, if only she knew how to get there.

  Chapter Three

  Zander stared at Ryan sitting in one of the wingback chairs opposite his desk and tried to wrap his mind around the bomb his cousin had just dropped. “A reporter called here to ask whether or not the hotel has been cursed?”

  This was a first. Zander was no stranger to New York’s tabloid press. He was fully aware of how brutal it could be. But a curse? That seemed beyond ridiculous, even for a rag like the Post or the Daily News.

  “She wasn’t asking exactly.” Ryan frowned. “She’s going to run with it.”

  Zander released a tense exhale. He didn’t need this kind of complication. Today of all days. He was still a little rattled after his encounter with Allegra. A lot rattled, frankly. Mainly by her assertion that she didn’t even remember their marriage pact.

  Then why the wedding gown?

  “Fine.” He needed a drink. A real drink. No more birthday champagne. A martini, maybe. Something potent enough to eradicate the memory of the past half hour of his life, if such a drink existed. “A single negative tabloid article won’t kill us, even one that says we’re cursed. At least they get points for creativity.”

  He waited for the pained look on Ryan’s face to relax a little.

  It didn’t. If anything, the crease between his cousin’s brows deepened.

  “It’s not a tabloid,” Ryan said. Then he uttered the only three words powerful enough to tear Zander’s thoughts away from Allegra Clark dressed in bridal white tulle. “It’s the Times.”

  This had to be a bad joke. The New York Times had won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other paper in the world. “Good one. You almost had me. But the Gray Lady is a New York institution. It’s a serious publication. They’d never run a story about a hotel being cursed.”

  “Think again.” Ryan lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “The Society section would.”

  Zander swallowed, longing once again for the smooth burn of vodka, vermouth and a little olive brine sliding down his throat. Things were apparently worse than he’d anticipated.

  The Times, for God’s sake. Only the society page,
but still...

  It wasn’t just the society page, though, as Zander soon realized.

  Ryan took a deep breath and lowered the boom. “Specifically, the Vows column.”

  Zander clenched his gut. “The Vows column? From the Sunday Wedding section?”

  “The one and only.” Ryan sighed.

  Having the hotel lambasted on the front page would have been better than the Vows column announcing that the Bennington was cursed. People all over the damn world read the wedding announcements in the Sunday edition of the Times. Like every other luxury hotel in Manhattan, a sizable portion of the Bennington’s business came from the wedding industry. Moonstruck brides and grooms.

  He shook his head. This couldn’t happen. Not after he’d worked so hard to restore the Bennington to its former glory. “I don’t understand where this is coming from. Why would a columnist from Vows think we’re cursed?”

  Ryan frowned. “You seriously have to ask?”

  “I do, actually.”

  I do.

  The instant the words left his mouth, he remembered Allegra saying the same thing while she stood in front of him, looking like she’d just walked out of a fairy tale.

  He’d taunted her. You even sound like a bride.

  Now reality was finally coming together with horrific clarity.

  Damn. He groaned. “We’ve had another runaway bride, haven’t we?”

  “Bingo.” Ryan seemed to be fighting a smirk. “The bride who crashed your birthday party just now was the latest. You know, the one you assumed was here to strong-arm you into marrying her.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” Now he did, anyway.

  Zander sighed. No wonder Allegra had laughed in his face. She hadn’t turned up to make good on their deal. She’d been on the run from her own wedding to a completely different man.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. But the timing seemed awfully fortuitous. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to believe she’d come back for him.

  You sure about that?

  Beneath the surface of his desk, Zander’s hands curled into fists. Of course he was sure.

  Ryan’s gaze narrowed. “What’s the story there, if you don’t mind my asking? The two of you were engaged once?”

  “No,” Zander said with a little too much force. Then, more evenly, he added, “It wasn’t like that.”

  Ryan stared blankly at him, waiting for more.

  Zander was in no mood to oblige. “Back to the matter at hand. We have two weddings on the schedule this weekend. Which one just went belly-up?”

  Zander didn’t personally handle the hotel’s wedding-planning details, but as with everything else that went on beneath the roof of the fabled building, he supervised with a watchful eye. It was his job to know what was going on, and he definitely would have noticed if they’d had a wedding on the schedule with a bride named Allegra Clark.

  Ryan took a beat too long to answer. “The big one. The Warren wedding.”

  The Warren wedding, as in Spencer Warren, city councilman and mayoral candidate for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. No wonder the Times had already taken notice.

  The hotel roster had listed the bride’s name as Ali Clark. So Allegra was going by Ali now?

  Zander wasn’t sure what he found more surprising—the fact that Allegra had changed her name or that she’d ever considered being a politician’s wife.

  It was time to face the facts. He no longer knew her. Allegra was a stranger now. She wasn’t even Allegra anymore, and she didn’t want to marry him any more than he wanted to marry her.

  He also had far more pressing matters to deal with at the moment. “This is our third runaway bride in the span of a month.”

  Ryan nodded. “We also had one about twelve weeks ago.”

  No wonder the Times thought the Bennington was cursed. “Once the Vows column goes forward, no one will want to book a wedding here.”

  “We’re screwed,” Ryan said.

  “No, we’re not.” Zander gave his head a slow, methodical shake. “We’ll just have to prove them wrong.”

  He wasn’t going down without a fight. He’d worked too long and too hard to let a runaway bride bring him to his knees.

  Even a runaway bride he’d once been foolish enough to love.

  * * *

  Allegra woke the next morning when the first rays of soft pink sunlight peeked through the ruffled curtains of Emily Wilde’s guest room. Her first conscious thought was how pretty the cozy attic space looked, with its white barrel-vaulted ceiling and antique pedestal sink in the corner. Her second conscious thought was that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a good night’s sleep.

  It defied logic. She was homeless, for all practical purposes. Stuck in New York with no belongings, no job and no fiancé. No plan. Yet, she felt more at peace than she had in months. Maybe she’d actually done the right thing, for once. She’d made a good choice in coming back...coming home.

  Except this wasn’t home. This was Zander’s mother’s house. His mother’s room. The pale gray flannel pajamas Allegra had slept in didn’t belong to her either. They were at least three sizes too big. She could only guess they’d once belonged to Zander’s father.

  Still, it felt nice here. Peaceful. She peeled back the curtain and watched the snow float down from the sky. Slowly, softly, like feathers shaken loose from a pillow. A tiny black kitten tiptoed its way through the white fluff on the sidewalk down below. Everything was so picturesque that Allegra’s heart gave a little lurch.

  Don’t get used to it. You can’t stay here. You cannot.

  Except where else could she go?

  Somehow she’d thought she could figure it all out after she got some sleep. But nothing had changed. Not really. The hotel was booked. Even if they’d had a room and even if she’d managed to locate her purse, her debit card would have only been good for two or three nights. Four at the most. She’d spent every last dime on her dream wedding. There’d been the fancy caterer, the string quartet, the flowers...

  An image of her extravagant bridal bouquet falling to the floor of the Bennington Hotel’s ballroom flashed through Allegra’s mind. She squeezed her eyes closed.

  Everything is going to be okay. It will.

  But when she opened her eyes, she found herself looking at a pouf of tulle at the foot of the bed. Her discarded wedding dress.

  Everything was not okay.

  She tossed aside the sheets, climbed out of bed and headed down the curved, Victorian-style staircase to Emily’s kitchen. She needed coffee. A gallon of it, if possible.

  “Good morning, dear. How did you sleep?” Emily sat at the kitchen table and looked up from the copy of the New York Times in her hands.

  Allegra glanced at the front page. She spotted Spencer’s name in a headline just below the fold and pointedly averted her gaze.

  “I slept great, thank you.” Allegra looked around the kitchen, with its blue-and-white-toile wallpaper and shelves crammed full of mismatched china teacups. It hadn’t changed a bit since the last time she’d stood in this spot.

  “Come sit down.” Emily folded the newspaper closed. “I’ve got your breakfast warming in the oven.”

  “You didn’t need to do that, Mrs. Wilde. Honestly, you’ve done enough.”

  “Nonsense.” Emily planted her hands on Allegra’s shoulders and steered her toward the table. “And stop calling me Mrs. Wilde. We’re not in dance class. Besides, I’ve known you since you were so tiny that your head didn’t even reach the top of the ballet barre.”

  Allegra sat and watched as the older woman removed a breakfast casserole from the oven that looked big enough to feed an army. Just how hungry did Emily think she looked?

  “Here you go. Dig in while I get you some coffee.” Emily slid a plate in front of her.

  Allegra couldn’t remember the last time someone had cooked her breakfast. Or any meal, for that matter. She could get used to this kind of royal treatment if she st
ayed here for any length of time.

  Which she most definitely would not.

  She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. “This is delicious. Thank you so much. For everything. I’m not sure what I would have done last night if you hadn’t offered me your guest room.”

  “You were in a bit of a pickle,” Emily said.

  The understatement of the century. Allegra’s stomach churned. She set down her fork and forced herself to meet Emily’s penetrating gaze.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  Maybe.

  No, actually. She didn’t. Not yet, and not with Zander’s mother. It was too soon and far too humiliating. “His name is Spencer Warren. But I’m guessing you know that by now.”

  Allegra glanced at the folded newspaper and her throat grew tight. Her hands started to shake, and she had to remind herself to take a breath.

  Not another panic attack. Not now.

  “I’ve made such a mess of things,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure you did the right thing,” Emily said, and even though Allegra knew she was just saying it to be kind, it still made her feel a little better. “You can stay here as long as you wish.”

  “I can’t.” It was just too awkward. What would Zander say when he found out she was staying with his mother? A lot, probably. A whole lot.

  “Of course you can. I’d love to have someone to dote on.”

  “But I need to get my life in order.” Starting with a job. And something to wear. And a place to live. “I’m a mess, Emily.”

  “Think of it as temporary, just until you get your feet under you. A month.”

  “A month?” How many times would she run into Zander if she was living at his mother’s house for thirty days? Too many. “Absolutely not.”

  Emily shrugged. “A week, then. Allegra, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t reinvent yourself in one day.”

  She had a point.

  And a week might not be too terrible. How often could Zander come by in seven measly days? He was a CEO now. He probably spent all his waking hours at his fancy hotel. He couldn’t even make it through a whole birthday party without working, which was a pretty good indication that he didn’t have time to hang around his mother’s brownstone. Plus seven days would give her time to come up with some sort of plan.