Mary Baker - Runaway Bride - A laugh out loud funny and feel good rom com

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2018

Copyright © Mary Jayne Baker 2018

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018.

Cover illustrations © 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

Title Page A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2018 Copyright © Mary Jayne Baker 2018 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018. Cover illustrations © 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

Dedication 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

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Acknowledgements

Also by Mary Jayne Baker

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

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.

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.’