Page 29 of The Mountain Man's Runaway Bride

The woman beams and waves. “Hi! I’m Erica!”

I blink. “Hi…?”

“This is Erica,” Boone says, scratching the back of his neck like he’s about to confess to crashing my truck. “Your bride.”

“My what now?”

Erica blushes. “I know, I know—I got cold feet. But you were so sweet in your messages. I just knew I had to come.”

“My messages?” I ask. Then I narrow my eyes at Boone. “Did you keep writing her?”

He lifts his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to! I just… the system auto-connected me when you never logged in and she messaged first, and it just kind of… happened.”

She turns to Boone. “You’re the one who’s been writing me?”

“Guilty.”

Here expression warms. “You’re even cuter in person.”

Boone coughs. “Uh, thanks. I mean—so are you.”

They smile at each other like teenagers at prom, and I might’ve rolled my eyes if my heart hadn’t just dropped out of my chest.

I look back at the airport.

“Where’s Quincy?” I ask.

Erica blinks. “Quincy?”

“She was inside—dark hair, big eyes, about this tall, wearing a flannel that looks better on her than it ever did on me.”

She tilts her head. “Oh. Her. She was here. I saw her before. I think she thoughtyouwere meeting me?”

I go still.

“She looked pretty upset,” Erica says gently. “She asks the agent if there was a flight heading out soon.”

No.

No, no, no.

I turn and run.

“Knox—!” Boone calls, but I’m already inside the airport.

I make a beeline for security and skid to a stop in front of the first agent I see. “I need to get through.”

“You’ll need a boarding pass,” she says coolly, not even looking up.

“I don’t care where it goes. Just give me something that gets me on the other side of that line.”

Ten minutes later, I’ve got a last-minute ticket to Fairbanks—where I don’t need to go—and a gate number that’s already boarding.

I race toward security.

That’s when things start going sideways.

“You can’t bring that,” the TSA agent says, pulling a hunting knife from my backpack.

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