Old trees shaded the small lots, and detached garages opened into narrow alleys. She pulled the choir robe tighter as she moved blindly across the yards, from one to another. Her heels sank into the soil behind freshly planted vegetable gardens where marble-size green tomatoes grew on the new vines. The smell of pot roast wafted through an open kitchen window; the sound of a television game show came from another. Soon that same television would broadcast the story of former president Cornelia Case Jorik’s irresponsible daughter. In the space of one afternoon, thirty-one-year-old Lucy had blown seventeen years of good behavior. Seventeen years of proving to Mat and Nealy they hadn’t made a mistake by adopting her. As for what she’d done to Ted … She couldn’t have hurt him more.

A dog barked and a baby cried. She stumbled over a garden hose. Cut behind a swing set. The dog’s barking grew louder, and a rusty-haired mutt charged the wire fence that marked the next yard. She backed around a statue of the Virgin Mary toward the alley. The toes of her stilettos filled with pebbles.

She heard the roar of an engine. Her back straightened. A beat-up black and silver motorcycle spun into the alley. She ducked between two garages and flattened her spine against peeling white paint. The bike slowed. She held her breath, waiting for it to pass. It didn’t. Instead, it crept forward, then stopped in front of her.

The rider gazed into the space between the garages to the place where she stood.

The motor idled as he took his time studying her. One black boot hit the gravel. “’S’up?” he said over the engine noise.

’S’up! She’d crushed her future husband, mortified her family, and if she didn’t do something quickly, she would become the country’s most infamous runaway bride, yet this guy wanted to know what was up?

He had too-long black hair that curled past his collar, cold blue eyes set above high cheekbones, and sadistic lips. After so many years of Secret Service protection, she’d grown used to taking her safety for granted, but she didn’t feel safe now, and the fact that she dimly recognized the biker as a guest at last night’s rehearsal dinner—one of Ted’s odd assortment of friends—didn’t exactly reassure her. Even semi-cleaned-up in a dark suit that didn’t fit well, a rumpled white shirt open at the collar, and motorcycle boots that appeared to have received nothing more than a dusting, he didn’t look like anybody she wanted to meet in an alley. Exactly where she happened to be.