I spent three years becoming the woman Grant Holloway wanted. A wedding dress built in Milan from thirty-one measurements. A mouth that smiled and never asked questions. On my wedding day I finally asked one, and the answer sent me running barefoot through an iron gate in a ruined gown. They sent a man to make me disappear. He should have been the last face I ever saw. Instead Miles Kincaid put me in his car, told me it was an extraction and not an abduction, and said I could open the door any time. I didn't. Government suit, granite jaw, a stillness that counts every exit in a room. He is the most dangerous man I've ever met, and the only one who never tried to decide what I am. One safe house. One bed. One rule: he doesn't touch me unless I ask. So I ask. But I didn't run from one powerful man to hide under another. I'm a journalist, and before I was Grant's fiancée I was building a story. Thirty-one women vanished over eleven years, every file routed through the Holloway Foundation and buried by the federal agent paid to look the other way. The wedding was never the trap. I was. And the man hired to end me is the only person alive who knows what the people hunting me will do next. Miles carries his own ghost, a woman he helped disappear because his handler gave the order. He swore he would never follow one like it again. Keeping me breathing is how he keeps that promise. Falling for me was never part of the job. They think a runaway bride is a loose end. They have no idea I came back with a byline, a stiletto, and a man who stopped taking orders the night he met me. Runaway Bride for the Damaged Protector is a standalone enemies to lovers romantic suspense with forced proximity, one bed, a heroine who saves herself, and a hero who would burn it all down first. High heat. Guaranteed happily ever after. No cliffhangers, no cheating.