Runaway Bride

Runaway Bride
Barbara Hannay

Your sexy ex roars up in a red sports car and offers to sweep you away from the mess you’ve made of your life…Well, wouldn’t you? With her wedding plans in tatters, and the local grapevine ablaze, Bella Shaw is getting out of town and speeding across country with gorgeous, dangerous Damon Cavello.Bella’s been playing it safe for far too long – and now her brooding rebel is back in her life it’s time to go wild!

Praise for Barbara Hannay

‘Barbara Hannay’s name on the cover

is a sure-fire guarantee of a good read.’

—www.cataromance.com

‘Stories rich with emotion and chemistry.

Very layered and lifelike characters …’

—RT Book Reviews

About the Author

About Barbara Hannay

Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’S life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who’s devastated when her family has to move from the city to the Australian Outback.

Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle.

Barbara and her husband live on a misty hillside in Far North Queensland’s Atherton Tableland. When she’s not lost in the world of her stories she’s enjoying farmers’ markets, gardening clubs and writing groups, or preparing for visits from family and friends.

Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired, and her website is www.barbarahannay.com

Also by Barbara Hannay

Bridesmaid Says, ‘I Do!’

Rancher’s Twins: Mum Needed

Molly Cooper’s Dream Date

A Miracle for His Secret Son

Executive: Expecting Tiny Twins

The Cattleman’s Adopted Family

Expecting Miracle Twins

The Bridesmaid’s Baby

Her Cattleman Boss

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Runaway Bride

Barbara Hannay

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

THE sports car was very low, very bright and shiny. Very red. It growled to a throbbing halt right in front of Bella, and the driver killed the motor.

‘Morning, Bella.’ His faintly amused gaze dropped to the overnight bag at her feet. ‘Going somewhere?’

Damon Cavello. Again?

Twice in one week was too much.

Damon … with the same wild, dark hair and brooding, bad-boy looks she’d fallen in love with in high school.

No, not now. I can’t deal with this now.

In the last ten years, she’d seen him many times on TV, of course, in a flak jacket reporting from a war zone, or poised precariously above raging floodwaters in South America, playing the ultimate foreign correspondent.

But it was a very different matter seeing him again in the flesh, especially on this morning of all mornings.

Bella felt as if she’d been snap-frozen. She couldn’t have smiled even if she’d wanted to, and she had to swallow before she could speak.

‘Hello, Damon. I’ve come straight from the hotel.’ Last night had been her hen night. ‘I’ve had a call about my grandfather, Paddy.’

She nodded in the direction of the sign for the Greenacres retirement home on the stone wall behind her. Then with businesslike briskness she picked up her bag, dismissing Damon Cavello with a coolness that she hoped matched his. ‘Sorry, I can’t chat. It’s important family business.’

About to hurry inside, she was dismayed to hear the driver’s door opening.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Damon called as he got out.

With the flashy sports car as a backdrop, he should have looked cocky or faintly comic, but he looked neither.

Unfair. He was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and jeans, and in these clothes, with the added advantage of darkly lashed grey eyes and rumpled dark hair, he was as disturbingly sexy as ever.

‘I said I can’t talk, Damon. I have to go. Paddy’s disappeared.’

‘Take it easy, Bella. I can tell you what’s happened.’

Dumbfounded, she gaped at him.

He said, ‘Your grandfather has run away with my grandmother.’

A wave of dizziness threatened Bella. Her knees sagged. She really couldn’t deal with this now.