Page 4 of Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride

“That guy.” He nodded toward a black pickup ahead of them.

“Shoot, that’s Billy Bob!” She ducked again.

“The jilted groom?” The driver looked down at her with his eyebrows bent into worried S-shapes. He had nice eyebrows, she noticed. Full and dark. His sable hair was close-cropped and curlier than her own, which was saying a lot.

“Yeah,” she said. “Might say we’re in between a rock and a hard place. And the hard place has a temper way worse than I ever knew.”

He looked at her quickly, a flash of temper she hadn’t expected in his eyes. “Did hehityou?”

“If he’d hit me, he wouldn’t becapableof drivin’,” she said.

He smiled at her when she said that. Hoo-boy. He was handsome, for a yank. He let off the gas a little more. She didn’t gripe about it this time.

“Is that why you left him at the altar?” He asked the question softly, like he was tiptoeing over a minefield.

She met his eyes. Hemsworth blue was what they were, she decided. “You really want to know why I left?”

“I do,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “You just said ‘I do’ to a gal in a weddin’ gown.”

He looked alarmed. Then he glanced into the rearview and looked even more alarmed. “They’re coming on fast.”

“Tell you what,” Maria said. “You get me out of this spot I’m in without havin’ to deal with either pickup full of rednecks, and I’ll tell you why I left Billy Bob at the altarandbuy you the best taco in Texas. Deal?”

He glanced at her, at the rearview, and then he kind of winced and crouched lower in the seat, like he was ducking, and he let off the gas even more.

Bubba’s big pickup truck grew louder, then sped by them, passing the little Volvo like it was standing still.

For Maria Michele, the world shifted into ultra-slow motion as the jacked up, bright-red F-250 rolled by. She was still crouched low in the seat but looking up. And that truck was up high with a clear line of sight down. The truck’s passenger-side window was open, and long jet-black hair she’d braided a hundred times was whipping in the wind. And then that head turned, and Willow looked right down at her, and her eyes widened.

Maria pressed a finger to her lips and tried to make her eyes urgent. Willow looked from Maria to the driver, and crooked oneeyebrow, and then the world shifted back to its normal speed, and the truck blasted by.

“I thought they were going to run us off the road,” the driver said. He sounded relieved.

“They wouldn’t do that. Although, they might do it to Billy Bob, if he got outta line at the church once he realized I was gone.”

He looked her way again. “You have to tell me about that temper now. A deal’s a deal.” Then he tipped his head to one side. “And maybe you could throw in your name.”

She looked at him in surprise then shook her head. “We did kinda skip that part. I’m Maria Michele Brand Monroe-almost-Cantrell. But you can call me Maria.”

“My mother’s middle name was Maria,” he said, glancing at the photo hanging from the mirror. She looked at it, too. Beautiful woman, brilliant smile, platinum hair, and those same blue, blue eyes. There was a flash of hurt in the son’s set, but he blinked it away and said, “Harrison Hyde.”

“Nice to meet you, Harry.”

“Harrison.”

“That’s what I said. Now, Billy Bob’s most likely headin’ for my favorite spot, so he’ll stay on the main road for another few miles, then take a right onto Bluebonnet Lane.”

“Your favorite spot’s on Bluebonnet Lane?”

“Pretty, right? My house is right on top. Well, it was gonna be my house. It’s everything you could want in a house, really. We were gonna buy it right after the weddin’. Wasn’t time before. I just finished vet school in May.”

“You’re a veterinarian?”

“Like my mamma before me,” she said. “If we take the next left, we can hopscotch dirt roads all the way to the highway and be in Mad Bull’s Bend eatin’ Manny’s tacos before Billy Bob and my cousins finish checkin’ all my usual haunts.”

“Heading west? Because I need to be going west.”

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