Running Towards Fate by Mariella Starr
Bella thought she had a perfect future planned. She had a loving boyfriend, a good job, and terrific friends. She had a home that made fairytales seem real. All her dreams were falling into place, except for a nagging little voice that snuck into her head from time to time and told her that something wasn’t right. One of the irksome voices was real. It was the stepbrother of her fiancé, but she knew he was wrong. He had to be wrong. She tried to keep those doubts buried, but sometimes they slipped through. She’d planned a perfect wedding, although nothing too extravagant, and Bella’s only concern was that her father’s wife would do something to ruin the event. Little did she know, her fiancé would be the one to destroy her future, and his stepbrother would be her saving grace.
Major Elliott McCroy had returned to La Rochelle, Georgia, to inter his mother’s ashes beside his father’s grave. An officer in the Air Force, he’d completed his mission promptly and was awaiting a service plane to fly him back to Texas. Elliott couldn’t help himself from accidentally, on purpose, running into Bella Madison. She’d been a child when he left for the Air Force Academy at eighteen, and she had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. A woman who was about to make a terrible mistake, although she refused to acknowledge it. He’d tried to talk to her, persuade her, but she was deaf to his words of caution. Short of kidnapping her, there was nothing he could do. He could only hope that she would accept the truth before reality dashed and disillusioned her spirit. Should the fates align, he would find her again. And, if that happened, he would finally tell her that he loved her.
