Carrying Her Millionaire's Baby. Sophie Pembroke
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THEY WERE RUNNING. Right.
Ash gave a sharp nod, then whispered, ‘Stay here.’
Easing himself off the table, he opened the door to the cupboard an inch and peered out. David stood with his back to him, staring down two identical-looking corridors branching off from the main one at the far end of the hall.
Perfect.
Ash slipped through the door and closed it silently behind him. Then he took a few steps forward before calling, ‘David! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
David spun around. ‘Have you seen Zoey? She’s been missing for fifteen whole minutes.’
If he’d sounded less irritated and more concerned, Ash might have felt guiltier about lying to him. Or if David had realised that Zoey had actually been gone for more than half an hour. As it was...
‘That’s why I was looking for you. She had a migraine so went up to her room to lie down.’
‘A migraine? Tonight?’ David pulled an exasperated face. ‘Zoey doesn’t even get migraines!’
Okay, now Ash barely felt guilty at all. ‘She’s had them since she was twelve. She had to take a make-up exam our last year at university when she missed one of her finals because of a migraine.’ How could David not know that about her? Wasn’t he supposed to be in love with her?
‘Well, she’s never had one in the eighteen months I’ve known her!’ David snapped. Then he ran a hand over his hair, looking away. ‘Sorry. I’m just...a little anxious right now.’
‘Wedding eve nerves,’ Ash said sagely. ‘I remember them well. Look, why don’t you go back and tell your guests what’s going on. I’m sure Zoey will feel much better in the morning.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,’ David said, already turning back the way he’d come. Ash smiled to himself. Sometimes, people just wanted someone else to tell them what to do. ‘I could do with an early night, anyway. I’ll go say goodnight then head up and check on Zoey. See if there’s anything she needs.’
Okay, that wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for, but Ash would take it. It bought them a little time, at least.
‘Great. I’ll...see you back in there.’ He waved a hand in what he thought was the direction of the bathrooms and hoped that David would get the hint.
He did. The moment David turned the corner towards the restaurant, Ash slipped back into the cupboard to find Zoey listening anxiously at the door.
‘I definitely told him about the migraines,’ she said indignantly.
‘He forgot an important medical condition; you’re skipping out on your absurdly expensive wedding,’ Ash pointed out. ‘I think you can call it even. And unless you want him following you, we need to go. Now.’
* * *
Getting out of the hotel, it turned out, was the easy part. Leaving behind the store cupboard and the too-small window, Ash guided them out through the kitchens instead. He’d spent enough of his formative years in hotels, when his father took him along on business trips, to know the ins and outs of most of them. And as a growing teenage boy he’d always, always found the kitchen first.
‘Why didn’t I think of this?’ Zoey said as they weaved their way through the busy kitchens, apologising to the sous chefs and kitchen underlings as they went.
‘Because you’re only used to seeing hotels as a guest,’ Ash pointed out. ‘When you’re staying somewhere as luxurious as this, people tend to forget that there’s a whole world behind the scenes, working hard to make your holiday happen.’
‘But not you?’ Zoey’s eyebrows were raised and Ash recognised that expression all too well. That You’re a rich kid and you’re lecturing me on how the other half live? look.
‘I spent a lot of time in hotels growing up,’ he said. ‘I got to know how they operate pretty well. And that was before I started working in the kitchens of one at the age of fifteen.’
Zoey stared at him incredulously as they burst through the final set of doors and into the only slighter cooler night air of the island. ‘You? Ash Carmichael, heir to the Carmichael millions, worked as a hotel cook?’
‘It’s billions, actually. Or will be soon, if my father gets his way. And I was deputy washer-upper for three months before I was allowed anywhere near the food.’ Ash scouted around the back of the hotel, making sure there were no loitering guests to see them run. ‘My father is a firm believer in earning your place—even if you’re born into it. I worked in every part of a hotel in the three years before I went to university, and after that I worked my way up through every department of Carmichael Luxury Travel before I was allowed anywhere near the top offices.’
‘Huh. Grace always said you worked hard, but she never mentioned all that.’
Ash shrugged. ‘Why would she? It was just a job.’
And his job—and his money, for that matter—had always been the least interesting thing about him to Grace. Which was one of the reasons he’d fallen so hard and so fast for her. She’d loved him in spite of his name, not because of it.
‘So, where do we go now?’ Zoey looked out at the darkening skies, a nervous line marring the skin between her eyes.
A gnawing feeling of doubt settled in Ash’s stomach. Was he doing the right thing, taking her away from this wedding? He’d promised her just two weeks ago that he’d make sure she went through with it. But even then he’d not felt entirely comfortable making that promise.
Watching her with David, he’d been worried. Or unsettled, perhaps. Nothing Ash could put a finger on, but just a sense of wrongness. Maybe it was the way that David’s eyes never left her, especially when she was talking to other people. Or perhaps the way that they only ever said yes to engagements he wanted to go to, and arrived and left on his clock, not Zoey’s.
Or maybe it was just that Ash didn’t like him much.
Whatever it was, Ash had to admit that he was glad Zoey wasn’t marrying him. If she’d gone through with it, there was an interminable future of boring dinners listening to David talking about how important he was, and how magnanimous, supporting Zoey in her little job at the gallery.
Yeah, he was definitely doing the right thing.
‘The company has a villa on a private island, not far from this one. Freshly refurbished and awaiting inspection by yours truly next week. I even know where the spare key is hidden. We could borrow one of your guest’s boats and be there before bedtime.’ He nodded to the array of boats moored up at the hotel, ranging from small speedboats to large private yachts. Many of the wedding guests had decided to make a longer trip of the event and hired boats for the occasion to tour the region—relishing the excitement of island-hopping in the tropics instead of yachting around the Med for a change. Ash had been hoping for a chance to take a trip out on one of the boats anyway, so really he was killing two birds with one stone.
Actually, this all sounded like a pretty good plan for one he’d just come up with on the spur of the moment. Hopefully the villa had an equally luxurious drinks cabinet, and he and Zoey could wait out the wedding sipping cocktails by the pool before they headed back to face the music.
‘Borrow a boat from somebody?’ Zoey asked, sounding less enamoured of his plan. ‘Doesn’t that mean going back into the hotel we just escaped from and telling one of my guests that we’re leaving? Kind of defeats the object, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I wasn’t exactly going to ask,’ Ash admitted. He’d always found it better to seek forgiveness rather than permission in situations like these.
‘So you want to steal a boat. From one of David’s friends and family? Because I can’t see that making me any more popular with them.’ As if she thought running out on her own wedding wasn’t going to