Run and Hide, Titan Protectors #2 by Cristin Harber
Chapter OneThe
wump of helicopter rotors mixed offbeat with the string quartet’s first notes of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.” The bridesmaids beamed. The groom stood front and center, filling out his tuxedo as only Mason Marlow could. Row after row of couture-covered guests stood like well-trained extras on the set of Hollywood’s biggest wedding in a century. Jules Lowry prayed that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her well-orchestrated life and stepped from the white canvas tent and onto the white-rose-petal-covered aisle.
I can’t do this.
Except she had to.She maintained her scrupulously perfect posture and chanted the wedding-day mantras that would carry her through the day.
Marriage means safety. Marriage is security.
Marriage ensured the celebrity gossip machine would stop asking who she was dating, and maybe, if Lady Luck was on her side, the man who’d stalked her for years would take a hint.Maybe those weren’t the reasons most people pledged their lives to another person, but she and Mason Marlow weren’t most people. They were friends—ish. More importantly, they were business partners with an occasional semidecent sex life and an ironclad business agreement that would protect both their interests. Sort of like friends with benefits but on a far more complicated scale.
Only one other person she could have asked to marry her, and he was nothing like Mason—nothing like the type who would ever agree.
Jules raised her gaze to the clear blue sky. Not a paparazzi helicopter in sight. Though the no-fly zone hadn’t been large enough. Sound waves rolled over the ceremony. One of the
wedding planner’s assistants was definitely screaming at an air traffic controller somewhere behind the scenes.
“Jules.”
Jules’s ears perked, but she didn’t break stride even as she cataloged the whisper-hissed interruption that sounded like Sloane Ellis, publicist extraordinaire.
Impossible.
Sloane would sooner tie herself to a railroad track than do anything to distract Jules from the money shot. The dress designer had half jokingly demanded a signed blood oath requiring
squared shoulders and a head straight ahead, lest the lines of her train and veil be marred. Sloane had cosigned, probably in blood.
Should her wedding have so much legal mumbo-jumbo and red tape?
Well, obviously, no.
Should she be thinking about the contracts as she glided toward Mason?
Eh, not really.
Her stomach churned. Where had her cold feet come from?
She searched for her parents. Their all-business attitude could ground her, but they were too far away.
Instead, she accidentally connected her gaze with an interviewer who’d ignored the merit of her most recent film and instead requested wedding-day dieting advice. Oh, the irony. Jules
had not shed a single stupid pound for her wedding. She’d actually put on muscle while shooting an epic-fantasy-turned-cinematic-blockbuster, thank you very much.
Jules focused on the endgame—the end of the aisle—and ignored every instinct to turn around and run for her life. Person after person smiled. Insecurity after insecurity filtered through her mind as she sashayed by the too-long guest list.
Too long. Too much. This whole spectacle is too ostentatious.
And if she were being honest, her PR team was too excited, and her fiancé was too grouchy. Hell, her stalker was too erratic of late, with weird messages telling her to retire while
at the pinnacle of her career.
The wedding hadn’t been about her in a long time. If her parents had known why she was actually marrying Mason, they would have burned Hollywood to the ground. Maybe they should
have. Even for them, her secretly arranged marriage might be a step too far.
After crushing miles and miles of petals underfoot, she reached her mark in front of the arch draped in white peonies and hydrangeas. The faint scent of whiskey mixed with the floral
notes. Mason reached for her, and she looked into his bloodshot eyes. That was unexpected.
Was he drunk? No. The man had never shown up late or unprepared on set a day in his life. She respected that about him. Though, this was real life.
Guilt flickered across Mason’s handsome face, and he took her hand in the same way he did with every apology after every argument. Lately, he’d been negative and nitpicky. She
probably hadn’t been a peach either. Wedding stress had messed with their mojo. Those problems would disappear just like the sound of helicopters always blended into the background.
What would it feel like to marry someone she was in love with?
She guessed she’d never know.
Jules focused on what was happening. The officiant was nailing her lines. The photographer repositioned behind the groomsmen. Postproduction edits would handle Mason’s
eyes and pale cheeks.
Behind her, one of the bridesmaids whispered.
That wasn’t in the script. Jules couldn’t tell who had said what. Their order was slightly off, and their pairs were no longer evenly matched to the groomsmen. One of her bridesmaids,
Olivia, had called in sick.
Jules’s lips upturned with an apology for the whisper. To whom, she didn’t know. Mason wouldn’t care, and whatever the mishap, it could be edited out of the wedding video.
Ugh. Why was she thinking about any of this? Despite the businesslike origin story of their nuptials, they were still getting married. Even if the longer she stood next to him, the more
he smelled like a whiskey bender instead of a pleasant cologne.
“Jules,” her sister Abigail whispered.
Years of media training allowed Jules to remain disturbingly composed even as an avalanche of questions begged her to turn around.
“Jules.”
The officiant faltered, half smiling with an abrupt glance toward the bridesmaids. The pause lasted a second, but her uncertainty blossomed, visible like an unruly vine clamoring and
climbing for attention.
Abigail bumped the bridal bouquet against Jules’s shoulder.
Erm, what was happening? She couldn’t ignore her sister. But she couldn’t acknowledge her either.
Mason’s eyes darted to the line of bridesmaids. A faint shimmer of sweat glistened on his forehead. He swayed, not enough for anyone to notice except her but enough to reignite the surge of anxiety churning in her stomach. Was he still drunk from the bachelor party.
Impossible.
Right? That had to be impossible. He’d texted her a little before midnight to say he was in for the night, that he’d see her tomorrow and he couldn’t wait.
Even if he’d been shitfaced, that had been almost eighteen hours ago.
Abigail coughed Jules’s name.
The officiant stopped, raising her eyebrows as if asking how to proceed. How was Jules supposed to know? She couldn’t turn around. She couldn’t step off stage. A director couldn’t
yell, “Cut!” This was as real as life could be. Sort of. Arranged and contrived but real enough as she stood in front of six hundred and seven people that she kinda, sorta knew.
She shifted and met Abigail’s pleading eyes. In that moment, she knew that the script had irrevocably changed.
Waves of gossipy murmurs spun over the rows of guests as though someone had thrown a boulder into a placid lake.
“What?” she mouthed, catching sight of Sloane’s cell phone with the bright phone case semihidden in the overflowing bouquet that Abigail held for her. Jules raised her eyes over the
line of furious bridesmaids to Sloane.
Jules’s publicist, her friend, wordlessly pleaded for her to look at the phone.
So she did and recognized the familiar branding of the gossip blogger that had made her life a living hell on a semiregular basis. Her stomach plummeted to the flower-petal-carpeted
floor, and ruining the line of her veil and her skirt, Jules inched toward Abigail as Mason hissed her name.
The panic in his voice was enough that Jules didn’t need to read the blog headline. But she did anyway.
Mason Marlow’s Last Night Single Spent With Pregnant Side Piece
Jules blinked. She read the words again, then again and checked the timestamp on the blog post. She’d stepped into the aisle at a punctual five o’clock. The headline from the ruthless
yet reputable celebrity gossip site had been posted at 4:57 p.m.
No one at the wedding knew.
Every guest had signed a nondisclosure agreement, packed their belongings into security lockers, and provided their emergency contact information to Jules’s team in case anyone outside the wedding needed to reach a guest. Everyone except for their parents, Sloane, and the wedding
planner.
Jules snatched the phone, wrecking the lines of her veil and train, and turned toward her sister.
“Would you like a minute?” the officiant murmured.
Jules swiped open the post. There was Mason—her heart dropped—alongside her missing bridesmaid with a baby bump. Olivia was pregnant? Mason, the father?
Every plan, every conversation, every negotiation and agreement with Mason disappeared as Jules stared at the photograph of his lips on her bridesmaid’s neck, his hand
splayed across the tiny bulge on her stomach.
She couldn’t stop herself and scrolled through the dozens of places that Mason’s mouth shouldn’t have been.
Mason cleared his throat. “Can we talk about this later?”
It wasn’t like they were in love. But they had very clear parameters under which they would get married. She hadn’t asked for anything other than the security that came with a partner. The safety and security from a friend—ish—who had promised they could be solid business partners in public and private.
Mason had always wanted the world, to have his name next to hers, to tap into her fanbase—to make money off her.
Her goals were less lofty but no less important. Love was for fools, but she craved the stability that came from a partner. More crucially, she wanted to dissuade her stalker with the barrier of holy matrimony.
“Jules?”
She ignored his pleading and visually sifted through his groomsmen. One after another, their guilt was displayed like a billboard of shame and embarrassment. They had all known. Of
course they had.
She might have been a fool, but Mason had just ruined the best business deal that he would ever come across.
Abigail rested her hand on her shoulder. Jules turned to her sister, needing to escape and uncertain how to handle the unscripted crisis. Sloane had disappeared to do whatever the Sloane Ellises of the world did to handle catastrophic PR nightmares.
Holding her head high and hiding the jumble of emotions she couldn’t make sense of in front of too many people, Jules walked down the aisle, followed by the parade of gorgeous,
furious bridesmaids.
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