Project: Runaway Bride. Heidi Betts

to hide it. And to buy herself a little time while her breathing returned to normal.

      She was an engaged woman. She shouldn’t be sitting here lusting after another man. Even if the man she was engaged to had turned into a bit of a jerk.

      But since he had, and since he was on his way back to Connecticut, Paul never needed to know that she was enjoying a very impromptu, very pleasant meal with a kind, handsome business associate.

      There was no harm in that. And since this was the best she’d felt in quite a long while, she was going to savor it for all it was worth.

      Three

      Present day

      It said something about his personal life that he was in the office, working, on a Saturday, Reid McCormack thought. And that he was happy to do it.

      For one thing, the place was quiet for a change. As a private and corporate investigation firm taking up five floors in the center of one of Manhattan’s tallest skyscrapers, the office was always bustling. With people, with conversations, with the ring of phones and buzzing of fax machines. Sometimes even the weekends were busy, depending on their caseloads and the number of investigators putting in overtime.

      This weekend, though, he’d lucked out. The offices—or the floor where his corner office was located, at any rate—was silent as a tomb. He could hear himself think. Hell, he could hear himself breathe.

      Not that that was a good thing, not today. But at least here he had paperwork to keep him busy. Reports to fill out and review. Cases to follow up on. New employee applications to consider.

      Some of it he’d been putting off for a while. Some he’d had to dig deep to come up with. Either way, it would eat up his day and keep him from going home too early to an empty brownstone where the silence was not only deafening but depressing as hell. With luck, it might also help to keep his mind off the thing he was trying desperately to avoid thinking about.

      With a grunt, he closed one file folder, set it aside and reached for another.

      He hadn’t always hated his town house. There was a time when he’d loved it. He’d bought it slightly rundown and renovated it from top to bottom until it put all of the other houses on the block of his upscale neighborhood to shame.

      Then he’d taken Juliet there. It had become their secret meeting place. A clandestine lovers’ nest where they’d hidden away from the world.

      Now he couldn’t sleep in his bed without missing the feel of her lying next to him. He couldn’t walk into the kitchen without picturing her standing at the center island in one of his discarded dress shirts, pouring fresh glasses of wine or nibbling on grapes from the fruit bowl.

      The memory of her voice echoed off the walls.

      The scent of her perfume hung in the air.

      The home he’d once loved had turned into a bitter reminder of the woman who was at this very moment walking down the aisle into the arms of another man.

      The pencil in his hand snapped. He hadn’t even realized he was holding the thing, and counted himself lucky it wasn’t the pen from his Montblanc set or the crystal letter opener instead.

      Making a concerted effort to unlock his knuckles and loosen his grip, he blew out a breath. He might not be happy about Juliet’s decision, but it was hers to make. Her decision, her mistake.

      And it was well past time that he put their ill-fated affair behind him and get his head back on business. He hadn’t built McCormack Investigations into a multimillion-dollar corporation by letting himself be distracted. Especially by a woman, no matter how beautiful or smart or refined she might be.

      For the fourth or fifth time since he’d gotten to the office, the phone rang. Not his receptionist’s line or one of the others on the floor, but his direct line. Who would be calling him here, at this number, on a Saturday?

      Annoyed now by more than just the ringing phone, he snatched it up and snapped, “What?”

      There was a slight pause and then a deep male voice came on the line. “Mr. McCormack. It’s Glenn from the front desk.”

      An image of the tall, wide-shouldered security guard from the building’s main lobby flashed into his head, and Reid immediately regretted his short tone.

      “Yes, Glenn. I’m sorry, what can I do for you?”

      “There are a couple young women down here insisting they need to see you. I told them you weren’t in today, but they don’t seem to believe me,” he added, a touch of humor tingeing the words.

      “Who are they?” Reid asked.

      “Lily and Zoe Zaccaro. They say they’ve been calling you all morning, but you didn’t answer.”

      With a long-suffering sigh, Reid pinched the bridge of his nose. So that explained the incessant ringing of his private line. But if there was anything he didn’t need today, especially in his current dark mood, it was these two walking blond disasters.

      Okay, so maybe “disaster” was a bit harsh. He’d never even met the youngest Zaccaro sister, Zoe, though the stories he’d heard about her led him to believe she was the wildest of the three.

      But Lily was the one who’d dragged him into the crazy world of the Zaccaro trio to begin with. Theft and corporate espionage and a disappearance that had turned out to be an amateur undercover investigation, and finally his introduction to Juliet.

      If Lily had never walked into his office, he’d be a happier man today, that was for damn sure. She’d brought him The Case That Wouldn’t End and led him straight down the path to personal misery.

      He didn’t say that aloud, of course, and didn’t tell Glenn to send them away. Instead, he said, “Send them up” and spent the few minutes before their arrival tamping down his temper and schooling his features. When the door to his office opened and the two sisters bustled in, he was the epitome of calm professionalism.

      The two women, on the other hand, were a whirlwind of yellow taffeta, blond hair and tear-streaked faces. They let out twin huffs of relief that they’d finally reached him after numerous attempts and flopped into the guest chairs directly in front of his desk.

      “Thank God,” Lily sighed at the same time Zoe muttered, “It’s about time.”

      Reid’s lips twitched at the younger sister’s cheekiness, but he kept his expression blank.

      “Ladies,” he greeted them in a clipped voice.

      It was the weekend, for heaven’s sake. There was nothing so pressing in Lily’s ongoing design theft case that they needed to show up at his office on a Saturday, and he didn’t want them thinking this sort of behavior should be repeated.

      And didn’t they have a wedding to attend in their fluffy, over-the-top bridesmaid gowns? Their sister’s wedding, to be specific.

      “This is rather unorthodox. Is there something I can do for you?”

      “Help!” they exclaimed at exactly the same time. They weren’t twins, Reid knew, but damned if they couldn’t pass as mirror images when they acted like this.

      Taking the lead, Lily leaned forward slightly. “You have to help us,” she said again. “I know it’s a weekend. I know you’ve probably had it up to your eyeballs with us by now.”

      Boy, she’d hit the nail on the head with that one.

      “But we don’t know what else to do.”

      “About what?” he asked calmly.

      “She’s missing!” This from Zoe, whose eyes were wide and glistening.

      Reid’s own eyes narrowed. A niggle of foreboding began to tickle at the nape of his neck. “Who?”

      “Juliet,” Lily supplied. Her voice had evened out a bit, as though she