Redhead On The Run (RedHeads Book 1)

  Redhead on the Run

  Rebecca Royce

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Redhead on the Run (Redheads #1)

  Copyright @ 2020 by Rebecca Royce

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951349-47-9

  Print ISBN: 978-1-951349-59-2

  Cover art by Lucy Smoke of Smoking Hot Covers

  Content Editing: Heather Long

  Copy Editing: Jennifer Jones at Bookends Editing

  Final Proof Editing: Meghan Leigh Daigle of Bookish Dreams Editing

  Formatting: Heather Long

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rebecca Royce

  www.rebeccaroyce.com

  Contents

  Untitled

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  For Jen Mishkin, just because.

  Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

  -- Søren Kierkegaard

  Chapter One

  I’d never get used to hearing gossip vloggers talk about me. Did anyone? I held my phone in my hand, watching as they dissected me for public scrutiny. I tried to not get in the way of the people whose job it was to make me look pretty for this blessed occasion.

  Pictures of myself in various outfits parading around at important events passed over the screen as the gossip website queen spoke about it in animated tones.

  “I’m told that today is the day.” She had a little bit of a lisp and squealed on the last syllable of the last word—day. I couldn’t decide if her affectations were put on or really a speech impediment that she’d tried to have fixed but hadn’t entirely corrected.

  Getting that video already uploaded was an impressive feat for Amanda Hill—her name, according to her website. It must have been a slow entertainment day in the world if thousands of people and growing—according to her view count icon in the corner of the screen—viewed her talk about my wedding day.

  I was famous, but not that famous. It wasn’t lost on me that I added to her number of views this very second by watching it myself.

  “One of our four favorite redheads is marrying her Prince Charming today. Well, if her version of a Prince Charming has a coke problem. I mean…who does coke these days anyway? It’s so passé. At least he has the princely bank account.”

  Again with that squeal on the last word. I shook my head and then stopped when my hair person glared at me. Whoops. Kit’s people were going to threaten the gossip site to get that last part down fast. Inside my own head, I rolled my eyes instead of shaking my head at her description of Kit’s coke problem. Passé?

  Using the word passé was so passé. It was two in the morning where she was in New York City, since it was eight in the morning in Paris—where I was currently sitting. She must really have wanted this story for her vlog to go out fast. The watch count was up a hundred just since I’d started viewing. I sipped my iced coffee while the woman who was doing my hair talked fast to the woman who was plucking my eyebrows. I’d had all of this done before I left Manhattan, but apparently, we’d missed a spot on my left brow. I should have been grateful they’d found the stray hair. I would certainly read about, hear about, and have to endure having it analyzed over and over online if I looked anything but perfect today. Find the hair. Pluck the hair. Comb the hair.

  My best attribute was my red hair. They called my family the redheads, after all.

  It wasn’t like I could really be upset about the hair thing. I was famous for no other reason than I was born into my family and all of us had our late mother’s red hair. Being very rich and one of a set of triplets with a notorious father had been enough to garner interest in everything about me since I was born. And before today—my wedding day—it had never irked me.

  But it was right now. Big time.

  The door flung open, and my future mother-in-law, Laura Allard, strode in, followed by my sisters Hope and Bridget. They were already in their matching bridesmaids’ dresses. Well, my sisters were. Not my future mother-in-law. I’d had little say in how this wedding was put together, not even picking out my own dress or the violet ones my sisters wore. Kit’s family, led by Laura as a true matriarch, was old money. They had class in a way that we didn’t—according to Laura. When I married Kit, one of the things I’d be gaining for my family was a certain Allard cachet we didn’t currently have, since Dad had earned his money in investments and not had any growing up.

  Well…we’d be getting the old-money reputation that meant we were classy all of a sudden and about thirty billion dollars in estate money Laura and her husband Bill would probably invest in my father’s fund of funds very quickly. It was a great merger, sorry marriage, for all of us.

  “Turn off that trash.” Laura Allard, nee McKinny, took the phone from my hand and set it aside, turning off the app entirely. She’d always treated me like I was beneath her. The whole new money problem. Laura liked to forget that she had no money before she’d gotten pregnant with Kit and forced Bill to marry her, lest they have a scandal on their hands. The woman, who had been his—gasp—secretary before that, had become the filter on who and what was acceptable ever since. She might want to forget her less than auspicious stride into wealth and privilege, but the internet had a long memory and Wikipedia had been my friend when I needed information about her.

  Any second now, she was going to launch into her latest speech. The Allards always did this, always did that. I was sick to death of listening to it. Kit assured me the pontificating would end after the wedding—the last thing she would get to dictate. The Allards always got married in Paris, France. This time, it was going to be in Palais Royale followed by a reception on the rooftop of the Hotel Raphael. All of it just small enough that neither family could invite everyone they knew. That was how we kept it exclusive. I’d been to neither place, hadn’t even let myself google them to see what they looked like, and paid little attention when we’d marched in here two hours ago to start the process of making me look acceptable. What was the difference? None of this would have been the wedding I would have chosen.

  Kit was my choice. I loved him.

  I swallowed. Fuck me. Didn’t I? I loved him. I did. Right?

  I’d met him when I was seventeen but hadn’t dated him until I turned t
wenty, two years ago. That was after a drunken night at a club where he’d confessed to me that he was in love with me. And Kit was gorgeous. Tall, dark haired, with green eyes that a girl could get lost in. I used to, all the time. He could be truly wonderful.

  At his heart, Kit was an artist. He painted. Not that he could talk about that very much. Allards weren’t painters. No, they were lawyers and business people who didn’t particularly go to offices but still had titles and the look of respectability. His father was drunk every day from about two o’clock on after playing golf, badly, every morning. And Kit was going to be exactly the same way after he finished getting his MBA that he would do nothing with.

  My body went cold.

  “Time to get you in your dress.” Laura clapped her hands together and grinned at me. For all that she disapproved of me, she equally loved the idea of me being her daughter-in-law. They’d never had more attention to her so-called charities as she had the last months since Kit put the ring on my finger.

  My own truth, what I should have known already, hit me hard like someone had taken a bat and struck me over the head with it. I. Wasn’t. In. Love. With. Christopher “Kit” Allard. Not even a little bit. I couldn’t even stand him.

  And he pretty much hated me, too.

  I laughed, covering my mouth, and all eyes were suddenly focused on me.

  “That’s funny?” Laura looked from me to my sisters as though they could explain my outburst. How would they do that when I couldn’t even speak the words myself?

  Hope walked over to me. She and Bridget wore matching up-dos today, which was so strange looking because they’d never let themselves be styled remotely the same, not since they’d had a say in what the nannies laid out for us to wear. I’d liked it, dressing like them. I’d liked it a lot longer than either of them had.

  Why was that?

  I blinked as Hope took my hand. “Babe? You okay?”

  Bridget watched me from two steps behind Hope. That wasn’t surprising. Hope was always the first to rush into any situation, while Bridget hung back, observing. If I was involved in whatever was happening, I stayed even further behind Bridget because I never had anything to offer to a situation that was of any value. Hope was kind, talented, smart, and Bridget was all of those things with the added bonus of a compulsive drive for success that matched my father’s and then some.

  And then there was me. Sweet, quiet, good for the family’s image, Layla.

  Who was going to marry a guy who hated her—who she equally disdained—because that was the best thing for the family right now. I could contribute nothing else of value to anyone except giving away my body and soul to keep our quarterly numbers up.

  I smiled at Hope. This was a familiar feeling. If I pretended to feel nothing bad, I never did. Why feel bad? I was young. Rich. Gorgeous. After today, I’d get on with getting on. Anything I wanted I’d have. Kit wouldn’t care what I did as long as I was discreet, and when it was time for us to have a baby, I was sure Laura would let me know.

  “You sure?” Hope squeezed my hand again, pressing at my unspoken answer. She understood what I hadn’t said.

  We were triplets. We’d shared a womb. Hope and Bridget were my first friends. We’d done everything together, and it used to be because we wanted to and not because my father’s PR company told us to be somewhere at a specific time for a photograph. The three redheads. If you added our older brother, four. But Justin was a different story. He’d always been separate, and these days, he was Kit’s favorite partner in crime when it came to partying.

  The two bored men together.

  And now I was going to be sister to one and wife to the other.

  The woman who had been plucking my eyebrows—when had she stopped?—held out my dress to me, and I stared at it as I rose from my seat.

  “Layla?” Bridget said my name. “Do you need some water or something?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t want to have to pee.”

  Laura smiled. “Good thinking. I hope you didn’t eat anything this morning either. We need to make sure it zips up.”

  It was going to be fine. I weighed myself twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening before dinner so I could judge how much to eat at any time. The scale hadn’t moved in the upward direction in the last two years. Down, yes. Up, no. I was always, constantly hungry.

  I smiled at Laura. “It’ll fit.”

  The dress was beautiful but not my style. It had been designed by Daniella Lareine, whose real name was Danielle Gordan. I guessed that wasn’t hip enough. She was the ‘it’ designer of the moment. The Allards wanted to seem trendy while maintaining some tradition by having the wedding in Paris. It was a romantic dress. A-lined. What they would call a sweetheart dress with an open back, except for one piece of fabric that ran down the center of it.

  I looked like Cinderella waiting for her prince, just as Amanda Hill had said on her vlog. This would not have been the dress I’d have chosen if I’d been allowed to pick. Not even close to what I’d wear, which was funny because the one thing I’d done in my life, the one real accomplishment I had was a book I’d written about fashion. About getting to your true look. Well, I hadn’t written it. I’d had a ghostwriter for that. But I’d dictated information and worked on it.

  I knew and understood fashion, how to make people look great in what they had.

  I stepped into the dress and nearly fainted as they zipped me. Could a dress feel like a coffin? Was it covered in poison seeping into my skin? Killing me slowly?

  I smiled. God, I was so good at playing pretend.

  Hope narrowed her gaze. “Something wrong with the dress?”

  “No, of course not. This is gorgeous.”

  “And you look stunning in it.” Bridget walked toward me. “But of course, you would. You are so beautiful, Layla. The most beautiful bride there ever was.”

  I supposed that was something a mother would say to their daughter on their wedding day. Ours had died when we were only a year old. She’d taken one too many sleeping pills and not woken up the next day. Leaving a two-year-old boy and a set of triplets for her emotionless husband to not raise himself. No mother meant Bridget got to play the role today. My father certainly wouldn’t.

  That was okay. I wasn’t marrying a man with no feelings. He had plenty of them, that was why he did so many drugs—so he didn’t have to think about any of them at all.

  “You look beautiful.” It wasn’t hard to tell my almost mother-in-law and sisters that. They were gorgeous. In violet, even though I wouldn’t have picked the dress, their eyes really popped out. Everyone who said we were practically identical hadn’t taken a good look at our eyes. Mine were blue. Hope’s were brown, and Bridget’s a deep green. Our faces weren’t the same either, although we did have the same high cheekbones, and if someone really looked, our red hair wasn’t exactly the same either.

  I wore mine long, halfway down my back, always had. It was wavy and took a lot of maneuvering to keep it neat looking. Hope had cut hers a long time ago and never had it longer than her shoulders. While Bridget’s was long and straight, something I’d envied her for every day when I battled my curls to not frizz.

  And just like that, I was dressed. I was ready to become the next Mrs. Allard.

  The room was stone dead silent. Was this how it was when others got married? I’d seen movies and pictures where there was champagne and laughter. When was the last time I’d done anything like that? A year? Two? The night that Kit confessed his love?

  A knock sounded, and everyone stirred to activity. It was like I was outside my body watching it happen. Laura let Justin enter the room. He fussed over me about how pretty I looked while his eyes remained dead looking, like he’d rehearsed the words over and over until they were meaningless and pointless coming out of his mouth. For just a second, I could actually feel pity for him. When had he died inside? Was there anything I could have done about that? We’d never been what anyone would call close. Justin was
like this remote creature we’d shared a gilded cage with for many years but didn’t really know.

  He handed me a box that Laura took from me immediately. A gift from Kit. It was a diamond tennis bracelet, huge and expensive. Not my style. Laura attached it to my right wrist, fussing over it.

  “Layla?” Bridget caught my attention. “Is there anything that you need?”

  I shook my head. “Not a thing.”

  I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. This was my role in my life. I had no other purpose except to fulfill this moment. Flowers were placed in my hands, and I held on to them like they were a lifeline. Walking out into the hall, I took my father’s arm. He was steady but not strong. Forty-two years old, but he looked older. Every year, it was like he aged ten.

  He didn’t tell me I looked beautiful. Didn’t remark on me at all. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was going through the motions. Our guests waited around the corner in an outdoor seating area especially made for today. We walked in that direction, no one saying a word.

  That was when I saw him.

  While I should have been looking at Kit, who waited on the other end of the aisle for me to become his wife, I couldn’t take my eyes off someone else in the crowd. The whole crowd of people were standing and waiting for me, but he was the tallest person there right now. I might not have seen him right away, but my security team, ever present, had moved and caught my attention in that direction. My father’s business partner for the last twenty years, Ezekiel Scott, looked downright bored where he stood.