GROOM UNDER FIRE

by Lisa Childs

  “Your sister.”

  “Rochelle?” She didn’t laugh the way she had when he’d suggested Stephen might be behind the attempts on her life. But her brow furrowed again, this time in consideration, and she asked, “Do you think she hates me that much?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know Rochelle. Like you said, I’ve been gone a long time. I feel as if I barely know Nikki—she was so young when I left.”

  “Nikki adores you,” Tanya assured him. “Rochelle doesn’t adore me. She can’t stand me.” Her voice heavy with resignation, she admitted, “She just might hate me enough to try to ruin my wedding. But Stephen would never work with her to hurt me.”

  Cooper had worried about telling her what he’d learned. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, too. So he hesitated.

  But, of course, she noticed. She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You found something that made you suspicious of them.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just suspicious of everyone.”

  She nodded. “Yes, you’ve changed. You’re not the boy I used to know. You’re cynical now.”

  He had reason to be. As a teenager who’d lost his dad, he’d had reason to be. “Everybody grows up and changes.”

  “I’m not so sure about Rochelle,” she ruefully admitted. “But if you’re trying to tell me that Stephen’s changed…” She shook her head. “I know him too well.”

  “Did he tell you about all the emails Rochelle sent him?”

  She tensed, as if his words had struck her.

  “So he didn’t tell you…”

  She shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he was hiding them,” she defended Stephen. “Maybe he didn’t want to cause any more trouble between me and Rochelle. I can’t imagine those emails were telling him how lucky he was to be marrying me.”

  “No,” he replied. “She didn’t want him to marry you at all. She wanted him to marry her—for all the money.”

  She laughed. “And that’s why you think they’re working together?”

  “All is more than half,” he pointed out. “It’s powerful motivation.”

  “Not for Stephen. He doesn’t care about the money.”

  “Everybody cares about money—especially that amount of money.” Given how wealthy her grandfather had been, her inheritance had to be millions—maybe even billions.

  “Grandfather’s lawyer told me that you care about the money, so much that you may have gotten Stephen out of the way so you could marry me yourself.”

  He flinched with a little twinge of guilt. He had been jealous of Stephen marrying her but not so petty that he would have wished harm come to him. He had considered Stephen his friend before he’d begun to consider him a suspect.

  She laughed. “But I assured Mr. Gregory that you really didn’t want to marry me at all—that’s why I didn’t let him bring that prenup to you.”

  “You should have let him,” he said. “I would have signed it.” And he really wished he had. He didn’t want her doubting him. It wouldn’t be easy to keep her safe if she didn’t trust him.

  “I was worried that you might be offended.”

  “That he thinks I want your money? Or that he thought I got rid of Stephen to get it?” Apparently, Arthur Gregory thought even less of Cooper than his employer had. He shrugged off the man’s accusation; he didn’t care what anyone—except Tanya—thought of him.

  She laughed again but nervously this time. “He didn’t think the money was your only reason.”

  “What other reason would I have?” Stephen had always been a good friend to him. He’d even tried to stay in touch after Cooper had gone away. But Cooper had been determined to put his past behind him and move on from his loss—of his dad and of Tanya. But by doing that he’d almost lost more—his family and his life.

  “Me.” She laughed again with self-deprecation. “He thinks you always had a crush on me.”

  If he wanted her to trust him, he had to be straight with her. “I did.”

  But if he was being completely honest, he shouldn’t have used the past tense. Because he definitely still had a crush on her—one so big that he maybe should have even called it love.

  *

  GIDDINESS RUSHED OVER Tanya, so that her breath quickened and her pulse raced and her head grew light. Maybe she wasn’t completely recovered from the asthma attack. Or maybe she was still that teenage girl who had been madly in love with Cooper Payne.

  But that love had been crushed years ago—when Cooper had insisted they were just friends. “If he was right about that,” she said, “was he right about my grandfather warning you to stay away from me?”

  He sighed and nodded.

  And hope flared that maybe he had shared all those feelings she’d had for him.

  But then he spoke. “He was right, though. We had nothing in common then. You were going off to college and I was going off to the Marines. Maybe it was smarter to never get involved than to get involved and break up.”

  “Why would we have broken up?” she asked. She never would have broken up with him. She would have written him letters daily. She would have waited for him to come home to her. Maybe she had waited anyway—since she’d never fallen for another man the way she’d fallen for the boy he’d been.

  “We had nothing in common then,” he repeated. “And we have even less in common now.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked. “You want to protect people—as a Marine and now as a bodyguard. I want to protect people, too.” That was why she’d wanted her inheritance—to help more families than the state’s limited budget allowed her to help.

  “As a social worker, you do protect them,” he said. “I’m actually surprised your grandfather didn’t talk you into pursuing a different career.”

  “He tried,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t as easy to manipulate as you must have been.”

  He scowled as if she’d insulted him. And then he laughed. “Your grandfather didn’t manipulate me.”

  “He got his way,” she said. “Just like he’s getting his way now—getting me to marry for his money.”

  Cooper laughed again. “I was the last person he wanted you to marry, so he’s definitely not getting his way.”

  “Mr. Gregory said that Grandfather would haunt him if he’d walked me down the aisle to you.” She sighed. “I sometimes wonder if he’s haunting me now, with all that’s happened—the threats, Stephen’s disappearance…”

  His mouth curved into a small grin. “You think a ghost is responsible for all this?”

  “I’d rather blame a ghost than myself.”

  “None of this is your fault,” he assured her.

  “You want me to believe its Stephen’s.”

  “And maybe Rochelle’s, working together.”

  She shuddered. “I don’t want to believe it’s either of them.”

  “What about me?” he asked. “Do you want to believe it’s me?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Yet goose bumps lifted on her skin. What if it was him? What if Mr. Gregory had been right? And she was alone with the man who’d gotten rid of Stephen?

  “I see your fear,” he said. “You may not want to believe it, but you’re worried that your grandfather’s lawyer could be right about me.” He reached inside his jacket where he kept his gun holstered. But he pulled out his phone instead. “I’ll call one of my brothers to take my place.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  But he’d already pressed a button on his cell—probably the two-way feature. Instead of a voice emanating from the speaker, gunshots rang out. And he cursed. “Logan! Logan, damn it! Are you all right?”

  “Go to him,” she urged. “Make sure he’s safe!”

  Cooper shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “You can leave me,” she said. “I’ll be safe. Or do what Logan did and leave me a gun.”

  “I can’t go to Logan.” Cooper brushed his hand over the top of his head before clenching his fingers into a fist of frus
tration. “Because he didn’t tell me where he was going. Neither did Parker.”

  She was shocked. “You didn’t trust each other?”

  “We didn’t want anyone to be coerced into revealing the other’s location.”

  Like any of his family would have given up any of the others. They weren’t like her and her sister. Rochelle had tried to talk her groom out of marrying her. Out of spite or greed?

  “Logan!” he shouted into the phone.

  The shots reverberated and then tires squealed. And Logan finally replied with a string of curses. “The weasel got away again.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Not his face,” Logan griped. “Had a hat pulled low, sunglasses and his collar pulled up.”

  “Could it have been Stephen?”

  “Same height and build,” Logan replied. “Could’ve been…”

  And for the first time Tanya realized it was a possibility that Stephen had turned on her—that he’d decided he wanted all the money. She was dimly aware of the rest of Cooper’s conversation.

  “Are you all right?” he asked his brother.

  “Yeah, but the hotel will be pissed over the windows of our suite getting shot up.”

  “Seems to be this guy’s M.O.”

  “Coward,” Logan cursed him. “The police are coming. They probably won’t be surprised to see me again…”

  “Good luck,” Cooper murmured before clicking off. “I’ll call Parker.”

  “Wait!” she implored him. “It doesn’t make sense that Stephen would do this. He has money.”

  “People with money never seem to think they have enough,” Cooper replied. “Your grandfather was certainly never satisfied.”

  Not just with the size of his bank accounts but with his family either.

  “But Stephen…” She shuddered. “It makes no sense, especially now. We’re already married. Why keep trying to kill me?”

  “If you listened to your lawyer, I’m probably doing it so I can collect your inheritance myself.”

  “But Rochelle could challenge you,” she said, “since our marriage hasn’t been consummated.” Heat flushed her face that she’d brought up that idea—and an image in her head of Cooper. Naked.

  “What?” he asked, his eyes dilating as if he had conjured an image of his own.

  “She doesn’t even have to kill me to collect her inheritance,” Tanya realized. “All she has to do is wait until tomorrow and challenge our marriage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we don’t consummate our wedding before my birthday, she could challenge its validity.” Knowing Rochelle, she probably would anyway—just to be spiteful.

  Cooper nodded as realization dawned on him. “And then she and Stephen can marry and collect it all?”

  She hesitated, unwilling to believe that her best friend could have agreed to betray her. Then she sighed in resignation and replied, “Yes.”

  “We can lie,” he said. “We can say that we consummated our marriage. How is she going to prove we’re lying? Aren’t you a good liar?”

  She had never been until that day she’d agreed with him that they could have only ever been friends. He was the only one who had ever believed her lie. “According to my sister, no.”

  Because Rochelle hadn’t believed that Tanya was in love with Stephen. She’d realized that she’d only intended to marry him to collect her inheritance.

  “I would lie to Rochelle,” she said. “But I couldn’t lie to a judge if my sister challenges us in court. For my job I’ve had to testify a lot, and if it was ever proven that I committed perjury…” All those other cases could be called into question. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

  “Then what do you intend to do?” he asked. “If I’m right about Stephen, you don’t need to inherit to pay his ransom.”

  “There has been no demand…” Her groom had not been kidnapped. He could still be hurt, though. Or he could be out there shooting out windows and running down people with cars and tossing tear-gas canisters.

  “So you don’t need the money,” he said.

  But she did need the money. For all those people she wanted to help and for an even better reason now. “Then if you’re right, Rochelle and Stephen will get it all.”

  “Not if we can prove what they’ve done.”

  “Can we prove it?” she asked. “Are those emails enough to bring any charges against them?”

  “No,” he admitted. “We would need more evidence.”

  “Evidence that we might never find,” she said. “I work cases where I know there’s neglect or abuse, but so many times I haven’t been able to prove it.” Until it was too late…

  She blinked against the sting of tears.

  And Cooper squeezed her shoulder. “You really care about your job, about those people…”

  Too much to let Rochelle collect money that could help them.

  “I care,” she said. “Do you?”

  “I want to protect you, Tanya.”

  She drew in a deep breath to gather her courage. “Then make love to me. Consummate our marriage.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Make love to me.

  He couldn’t have heard her correctly. He must have been daydreaming. And his heart was only pounding as wildly as it was because of the shots he’d heard being fired at his eldest brother. It wasn’t because he was hoping like hell that he had heard her correctly.

  Desire rushed up, choking him, so that he had to clear his throat before asking, “What did you say?”

  Her face flushed a bright shade of pink. Clearly too embarrassed to speak, she just shook her head.

  Nobody had ever accused him of being too sensitive. Maybe he would have to learn some sensitivity—now that he was a married man and all. But he wasn’t a really married man unless…

  “You heard me,” she challenged him.

  “I heard you,” he admitted. “But I don’t understand you.” If she was so in love with Stephen…

  “I thought I’d made it clear,” she said.

  He shook his head now—trying to clear the passion from it, so he could think clearly.

  “If Rochelle challenges this marriage in court,” she said, “I won’t perjure myself.”

  He wanted her. But he wanted her to want him, too, as more than a means to an end. “So you want to sleep with me to spite your sister?”

  “To stop her from getting what she wants,” Tanya replied. “The money.”

  “And what about Stephen?” What were Tanya’s feelings for her missing fiancé? She had been so loyal in her defense of him. Where was that loyalty now?

  “If you’re right and they’re in on this together, she can have him!”

  “I don’t know what’s right or wrong,” Cooper admitted. “I was just saying it was a possibility that they could be in on it together.”

  “Because of the emails,” she said with a nod.

  She was as hurt as he had worried she would be if he shared his suspicions. But he’d had to be honest with her then. And now.

  “But maybe they’re not,” he said. “We didn’t find any reply to her email from Stephen. So maybe he has nothing to do with any of this.” He actually hoped that was the case or he had lost a friend, too. But if Stephen wasn’t in on it and had been seriously injured, Cooper may have already lost a friend. And then he’d married that friend’s bride.

  That made him the biggest betrayer.

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “I don’t know what I want to believe anymore. If he’s working with Rochelle, at least he’s alive. He’s a snake,” she cursed him, “but he’s alive. If he’s not working with her, where is he?”

  “We’re still looking for him,” Cooper assured her. “Parker’s in touch with all his old contacts from when he worked Vice.” While Logan had quickly moved from patrol to detective, Parker had preferred working undercover. Or, if his reputation was to be believed, under covers.

  Cooper would like to get und
er covers with his bride. But for the right reasons…

  Like mutual desire. Need. Love…

  “Vice?” she asked. “What would that have to do with Stephen?”

  “Parker’s informants are on the streets,” he said. “They hear things. They see things.” And hopefully one of their tips would lead them to Stephen. “And everyone on the Payne Protection payroll is working on finding him and whoever has been shooting at you.”

  “At you and your brothers, too,” she reminded him. “I’m sorry—sorry for all the trouble I’ve been. I shouldn’t have asked you to…”

  “Make love to you?”

  She flushed again. “I know it wouldn’t have been making love. I know we’re not really married.”

  “The minister pronounced us man and wife,” he said. Had she been aware of that or had she already passed out?

  “You made him do that before we left the church,” she said, her head tilted as if she searched for the memories. “Everybody thought the building was on fire, but you made him finish the ceremony…”

  “I recognized the kind of smoke,” he said. “I didn’t think we were really in danger. But then you stopped breathing…” He shuddered at his own memories of their ceremony and of holding her lifeless body in his arms.

  “You saved me,” she said. “Did I thank you for that?”

  “I don’t want your gratitude,” he said.

  He wanted her. Body, soul and heart. But no matter what the minister had pronounced them, she was not really his wife.

  “I know you’re just doing your job,” she said. “But it’s my life you keep saving…”

  It was more than his job. She was more than his job. And in saving her life, he was saving his own. Because without her…

  “I can’t ask you for anything else,” she said, her face still flushed but downturned—as if she was unable to meet his gaze. “Forget what I said…”

  It would be easier to forget his name than to forget what she’d suggested, what she’d asked him to do—with her.

  Make love…

  Tanya looked for a hole to crawl into, but despite her pacing, she hadn’t worn one into the floor. So she glanced toward the door that led to the bedroom. But her face got even hotter with the embarrassment coursing through her. “I—I should probably…”