The Runaway Bride

Of course not. The truth was seldom the option when it came to spinning a scandal.

“Where are you?” her father asked. “I’ll send the security team to bring you home.”

“I don’t need to be fetched,” Bernie retorted. “I need some space, time to think. I don’t want to come back just yet.”

“Are you in the Bahamas?” her father pressed. “You could stay for a week or so, but we need a consistent story we can all stand behind with reporters.”

“No, I’m not in the Bahamas. Look, Dad, I need you to promise to leave me alone for a bit. I promise not to breathe a word of anything to reporters.”

“Where are you, for crying out loud?” he demanded.

“I need your word.” For all of her father’s insistence on a public face, he’d honor a promise to his daughter. He always had.

There was a moment or two of silence, then he sighed. “Fine. Now where are you?”

“Runt River, Ohio.”

There was silence again, this time complete as if he were holding his breath. Then he exploded. “What?”

“I drove out here after the wedding. I didn’t really mean to—I just hit a highway and kept going. Then I remembered Aunt Lucille was out here, and I figured I could use a bit of family support.”

“From Lucille? After all I’ve told you about her—”

“She’s pretty harmless, Dad.”

“She’s not harmless. She has a vendetta against me, and you’re my daughter. She is not the person to trust with something this volatile—”

“Too late,” Bernie confessed. “I told her what happened. But I’ll be careful. I’ll keep a low profile—wear something unattractive. I’ll blend right in with the locals.”

“This isn’t funny,” her father snapped. “Your face has been on the covers of magazines and newspapers for the past four months because of this wedding. You are not going to blend in.”

“I don’t care!” Her anger was rising again. “Dad, if I get into a bind, you’re my first call. That’s a promise. But give me space, or I will find the nearest reporter and give him an exclusive about Calvin McMann’s cheating ways.”

“Don’t you threaten me.”

“I’m half joking.” She sighed. “Dad. Space. Please.”

“Fine. But don’t believe anything your aunt tells you. She’s a master manipulator.”

Lucille hardly seemed like the manipulative shrew her father made her out to be, but Bernie hardly knew the woman, either. Maybe it would be wise to tread carefully with her aunt.

Except that Liam trusts her.

She hardly knew Liam, either, and the men in her life hadn’t exactly been the most trustworthy lately. Calvin had cheated on her, and her father seemed more concerned with the family political future than he did with his only daughter’s emotional state. At this point, she was wary of everyone.

“I’ll be careful, Dad. I promise. But I’d better hang up. I’m hungry. Tell Mom—” She sighed. Her mother would be furious. Tell her mother what, exactly? “Tell her I’m okay.”

After their goodbyes, she ended the call and got out of bed. She needed to get dressed and face the day. One step at a time.

There was a tap on her door.

“Yes?”

“Everything okay?” her aunt asked.

“Come in.”

The door opened, and Lucille peered at her cautiously, a folded, faded towel in her hands. “Sorry about the thin walls. Was that your father?”

So her aunt had heard that conversation? Bernie was used to more privacy than this.

“Yes.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Aunt Lucille, could you tell me something?”

“Sure.” Lucille deposited the towel on the top of the dresser.

“Why not just give my father the ring?” she asked. “It’s been, what, thirty-five years?”

“Forty,” her aunt countered. “And for the record, he didn’t want the ring to propose to your mother. This was before he met her. He wanted it to propose to one of the kitchen workers in our family’s home. Everyone was against it—even the girl’s family. It’s rather ironic that he had such a problem with Arnie, and he was a lawyer! Just not blue enough blood.”

Her father had wanted to marry the kitchen help? That didn’t sound like the Milhouse Morgan who hardly knew the names of the squadron of people who kept his home immaculate.

“And you were against that engagement, too,” Bernie surmised.

“They were all wrong for each other.” Lucille shrugged. “And she was after the money.”

“Oh.” All this time, she’d imagined that ring belonged on her mother’s finger, but the story was never quite what it seemed. “So why not give it to him now?”

Lucille was silent for a moment, then a small smile tickled the corners of her lips. “Because I don’t want to.”

Bernie stared at her aunt in surprise. That was it? She didn’t want to? A country of politicians pandered for her father’s support, and this one stubborn woman could thwart him with a whim? Laughter bubbled up inside her, and she shook her head.

“Okay, then,” she said.

“The towel is for your shower.” Her aunt turned back toward the hallway again. “The hot and cold are switched, and it takes a few minutes for the water to warm up. Not what you’re used to, I’m sure, but it does the trick.”

None of this was what Bernie was accustomed to, but she couldn’t help but feel mildly envious of the aunt who got to do what she wanted to and felt no obligation to the Morgan family.

But what did Bernadette want? She wanted to get to know this aunt who held odd family secrets, and she wanted to hide from all the fallout of her failed wedding. And now that she’d met Ike, she wanted to get to know this tiny Morgan who had lost his mother too early.

Family had to be about more than influence and politics, didn’t it?

CHAPTER FOUR (#u90d596ff-cb17-5f31-a66c-b92c58acaf9c)

IKE REFUSED ALL the breakfast options Liam had offered him the next morning. Liam was starting to get better at buying foods Ike would eat. So far, the kid was a fan of macaroni and cheese, toast, yogurt and scrambled eggs—but only if the eggs were room temperature and the perfect fluffiness.

He’d also been known to eat a banana, but only if it was just a smidge shy of being ripe. Five minutes past Ike’s liking, and he’d calmly walk to the couch and dump the banana onto it—his version of the garbage, it seemed. A lot of things ended up on the couch—apple slices, toast that was cut diagonally, grapes that were too soft, grapes that were too hard, the half of a cookie that got soggy in his hand... He was a picky kid.

When Liam finally brought Ike across the street to Lucille’s, Ike looked up at the older woman with big, unblinking eyes and whispered “Hungry...” in a tone so plaintive anyone would think he was kept in a cage in the basement, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The twin-size mattress on the floor in Liam’s bedroom was supposed to be for Ike, but the tables had turned somehow, and now Ike slept in Liam’s bed and Liam got the mattress on the floor.