Runaway Bride. Barbara Hannay

       Praise for Barbara Hannay

      ‘Barbara Hannay’s name on the cover

      is a sure-fire guarantee of a good read.’

      —www.cataromance.com

      ‘Stories rich with emotion and chemistry.

      Very layered and lifelike characters …’

      —RT Book Reviews

      About the Author

       About Barbara Hannay

      Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’S life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who’s devastated when her family has to move from the city to the Australian Outback.

      Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle.

      Barbara and her husband live on a misty hillside in Far North Queensland’s Atherton Tableland. When she’s not lost in the world of her stories she’s enjoying farmers’ markets, gardening clubs and writing groups, or preparing for visits from family and friends.

      Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired, and her website is www.barbarahannay.com

       Also by Barbara Hannay

      Bridesmaid Says, ‘I Do!’

      Rancher’s Twins: Mum Needed

      Molly Cooper’s Dream Date

      A Miracle for His Secret Son

      Executive: Expecting Tiny Twins

      The Cattleman’s Adopted Family

      Expecting Miracle Twins

      The Bridesmaid’s Baby

      Her Cattleman Boss

       Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Runaway Bride

      Barbara Hannay

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE sports car was very low, very bright and shiny. Very red. It growled to a throbbing halt right in front of Bella, and the driver killed the motor.

      ‘Morning, Bella.’ His faintly amused gaze dropped to the overnight bag at her feet. ‘Going somewhere?’

      Damon Cavello. Again?

      Twice in one week was too much.

      Damon … with the same wild, dark hair and brooding, bad-boy looks she’d fallen in love with in high school.

      No, not now. I can’t deal with this now.

      In the last ten years, she’d seen him many times on TV, of course, in a flak jacket reporting from a war zone, or poised precariously above raging floodwaters in South America, playing the ultimate foreign correspondent.

      But it was a very different matter seeing him again in the flesh, especially on this morning of all mornings.

      Bella felt as if she’d been snap-frozen. She couldn’t have smiled even if she’d wanted to, and she had to swallow before she could speak.

      ‘Hello, Damon. I’ve come straight from the hotel.’ Last night had been her hen night. ‘I’ve had a call about my grandfather, Paddy.’

      She nodded in the direction of the sign for the Greenacres retirement home on the stone wall behind her. Then with businesslike briskness she picked up her bag, dismissing Damon Cavello with a coolness that she hoped matched his. ‘Sorry, I can’t chat. It’s important family business.’

      About to hurry inside, she was dismayed to hear the driver’s door opening.

      ‘Hang on a minute,’ Damon called as he got out.

      With the flashy sports car as a backdrop, he should have looked cocky or faintly comic, but he looked neither.

      Unfair. He was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and jeans, and in these clothes, with the added advantage of darkly lashed grey eyes and rumpled dark hair, he was as disturbingly sexy as ever.

      ‘I said I can’t talk, Damon. I have to go. Paddy’s disappeared.’

      ‘Take it easy, Bella. I can tell you what’s happened.’

      Dumbfounded, she gaped at him.

      He said, ‘Your grandfather has run away with my grandmother.’

      A wave of dizziness threatened Bella. Her knees sagged. She really couldn’t deal with this now.

      A mere hour ago her fiancé, Kent, had left her hotel room with her diamond engagement ring in his pocket and a new lightness in his step. Minutes later, she’d received a phone call from Greenacres with the news that her grandfather had apparently disappeared.

      She’d assumed the old trickster was simply playing hooky. It had happened before. Any minute now there’d be news that Paddy had been found at the bowls club, or on the banks of Willara Creek, fishing. She’d never dreamed—

      ‘The Greenacres people rang me an hour ago and I’ve been checking it out,’ Damon said. ‘From all accounts, Paddy and Violet took off from here last night in Violet’s car.’

      ‘For heaven’s sake. A joy-ride?’

      ‘I’ve spoken to the fellow who runs the servo on the outskirts of town. He says they woke him up some time past midnight and begged him to fill their tank. They told him it was an emergency and they were heading north.’

      ‘An emergency?’ She frowned. ‘It’s not a joy-ride, then. How far north?’

      ‘That’s the burning question. They could be heading anywhere up the coast, possibly all the way to Cairns, and that’s at least two days’ drive. An elderly couple might take longer. The guy at the servo reckons they were on some kind of mission, and they were headed north-east, for the coast road.’

      Bella rubbed at her brow as she tried to take this in. ‘But—but that’s crazy. They’re too old to just take off like that. They’re in their eighties, for goodness’ sake. Paddy has a pacemaker.’

      ‘And Violet has high blood pressure.’

      At this she looked up, and without warning, her gaze locked with Damon’s. For a fraught moment, she forgot everything as she reconnected with the silvery grey gorgeous-ness of his eyes.

      So many memories …

      No. Heavens, no, she mustn’t start remembering now.

      ‘This is ridiculous,’ she snapped, deliberately shifting her gaze and letting out an audible sigh. ‘It would help if we could ring them, but Paddy doesn’t have a mobile phone. When he moved into Greenacres, he said everyone knew where to find him—he didn’t need a mobile.’

      ‘It was the same with Violet. Last thing she wanted was her phone going off at the hairdresser’s or in church. If people wanted her, they could wait till she got home.’

      ‘So … what can we do? Call the police?’

      ‘I don’t think there’s any need to panic,’ Damon said carefully. ‘Actually, I’ve got it sorted.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘I’m going