GROOM UNDER FIRE

by Lisa Childs

  He hesitated. He had never liked hearing “I told you so.” But she was entitled to say it. “You were right.”

  “It was a setup? But the car was there.”

  “The police have it now.” Or what was left of it. “They’ll process it for evidence.” Especially the bloodstain in the trunk.

  “Why was it a setup?”

  “There was a forklift…” He shrugged and then grimaced again.

  Her eyes must have adjusted to the dark because she saw it and ran her fingers over his face. “You’re hurt.”

  “Just a little bruised.” Like all his ribs and his back. “I’ve been hurt worse before.”

  She gasped in alarm. “Don’t tell me that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t let myself think of you over there—in danger. I didn’t let myself think that you might never come back.” She shuddered. “But every once in a while the thoughts crept in…like you did through the window.” She stared up at him. “Why did you come through the window?”

  That had been extreme—especially since he’d had to straddle the ledge between the fire escape and her window. “I don’t want the others to know I’m here.”

  “Why not? Don’t they want you here?”

  “Not tonight,” he admitted.

  “Because you’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine.” And he was, now that he knew she was safe, now that he was with her. Or maybe the painkillers had just finally kicked in, because he didn’t feel it now. He felt too many others things with her soft body pressed against his.

  Her fingers lingered on his face, stroking along his cheekbones and then his jaw. “I’m sorry…”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “That happened years ago,” he reminded her. But sometimes it felt like just days or hours—the pain and loss would hit him so hard. Leaving home hadn’t lessened that pain as he’d thought it would.

  “But your father’s killer just died,” she said, “and that must bring that all back.”

  He tensed in shock. “What?”

  “Didn’t Logan tell you either? Nikki didn’t know.”

  He suspected Parker didn’t know either. Damn Logan. Damn him for trying so hard to take their father’s place as the patriarch and the protector.

  “Candace thinks that the man’s daughter might have been the one who shot at Logan earlier today.”

  “When he was posing as me?” He shrugged. “I don’t know…”

  “You don’t think so? Whatever happened with the forklift—could it have been meant for Logan?” she asked.

  He sighed. “No. It was definitely meant for me. And it involved the car that nearly killed you. What happened in that warehouse had nothing to do with Logan.”

  “And everything to do with me…” Her voice cracked with emotion. Guilt?

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I just want it to be over…”

  The attacks or their marriage? When one ended, so would the other. Cooper had to keep that in mind so he didn’t think it was real. So he didn’t think she was actually his wife.

  He eased his arms from around her and dropped them back to his sides. “I should let you sleep…”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not without you…” She wrapped her arms around him and tugged him down beside her.

  He felt a twinge, but the painkillers must have kicked in because it wasn’t that bad. Or maybe her holding him just felt so good…

  “Tanya…”

  “I was so worried about you,” she said. Her lips touched his cheek, then slid across until she found his mouth. She pressed whisper-soft kisses to his lips, as if afraid that she might hurt him.

  He gripped the back of her head, tangling his fingers in her hair, and pulled her closer. Then he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips tightly to hers.

  She gasped against his mouth, and he took advantage of her open lips, sliding his tongue between them. In and out. He tasted her—the sweetness that was only Tanya. Her arms tightened around him.

  But he pulled back. Not because he was in pain but because he was overdressed. He quickly stripped off his clothes, careful this time to keep the gun within reach of the bed. While he stripped, she’d done the same—tossing aside her shirt and pants and those little strips of lace and satin that had driven him nearly out of his mind.

  But he preferred this—skin sliding over skin—as he joined her on the bed again. Her thigh slid between his, her hip rubbing against his erection. It throbbed with arousal. He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted—the way he needed—his wife.

  If the way she was touching him, kissing him, was any indication, she wanted him, too. Or she’d been really worried about him.

  If that was the case, he loved the way she expressed her relief. Her lips closed around him, taking him into her mouth, while her fingers teased his nipples. He groaned.

  “Am I hurting you?” she asked, all concern.

  “You’re killing me,” he said. “But in a good way.”

  “Let me make it all better,” she offered.

  But he stopped her, tangling his hand in her hair again, before she could lower her head back down. He kissed her passionately—their tongues swirling, and their breath coming in quick pants.

  Just her kiss nearly had him at his breaking point. He felt as if he was going to burst. He wanted her as crazy for him as he was for her, so he teased her nipples with his fingers, tugging gently at them.

  She moaned into his mouth. Then he moved one hand lower, between her legs. And now she whimpered and squirmed against him. Then she bit her lip, holding in a scream while she came—her body shuddering against his.

  He shuddered, too, with need. She pushed him back on the bed, and he didn’t even feel the pain of his bruised back. He felt only her as she guided him inside her. She rode him, sliding up and down, rocking back and forth. She drove him out of his mind.

  She shuddered again as she reached her peak. Instead of biting her lip this time, she bit his. And he welcomed the bite.

  It snapped the last of his control, and he joined her in the madness, his body jerking as he thrust deep and filled her. She dropped onto his chest, her heart beating frantically—her breath a hot pant against his throat. Their bodies were still joined, so he didn’t move her. He just wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

  The pain pills must have really kicked in because he felt sleep coming. And he couldn’t fight it off as he had so many times before. The others were in the apartment; if someone else sneaked through her window and she screamed, they would help her. She was safe. So he slept…

  *

  SHE HATED TO leave him. But it was only for a moment to answer the call of nature. Carefully, so she wouldn’t wake him, Tanya slid out from his embrace and rose from the bed. Immediately she felt empty and cold.

  She reached for the robe Candace had left on the back of the bedroom door and wrapped it around herself. Then she slipped quietly out of the room and into the hall.

  “Is he in there?” Candace asked.

  Tanya jumped and clutched a hand to her throat at the surprise of finding the female bodyguard waiting in the hall. “What?”

  “Logan called,” she uttered those words with great relief, “and said that Cooper checked himself out against doctor’s orders.”

  Her hand trembled. “How badly is he hurt?”

  “Bruised ribs. He hit the asphalt hard when the forklift nearly pushed that car on top of him.”

  Tanya shuddered.

  “The doctor said the fall alone could have broken his back. They wanted to keep him overnight for observation.”

  The darkness in her room and now in the hall had already grown thinner as night slipped away. Daylight would break soon. So maybe he hadn’t left too soon.

  “Logan figured he’d broken out to come here,” Candace continued, “to come to you.”

  Tanya nodded. “He�
�s here. He came through the window.”

  The other woman shook her head. “The fire escape is a couple of windows over. He must have edged along the window ledges.”

  “Tell Logan he’s okay,” Tanya said. “Really. He’s sleeping now.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Candace said as she rushed down the hall—probably to wherever she’d left her cell phone.

  Tanya made quick use of the bathroom and returned to the bed where Cooper slept. His breathing was too irregular, as if dreams—or more likely, nightmares—disrupted him. She slipped off the robe and crawled back into bed with him. He had turned toward the wall, so she wrapped her arms around his side and pressed herself to his back.

  He grunted and jerked, as if in pain. So she pulled away, giving him room. And giving herself enough room to study his body in the gathering light of dawn.

  His back was blue and purple in some spots, dark red in others where the skin was raw. And the usually defined and sculpted muscles were swollen. She understood the doctor’s concern now, his reasons for wanting to keep him overnight.

  Cooper should have stayed in the hospital. Instead, he’d come to her. Why? It was all her fault.

  The car that had nearly crushed him had almost run her over. That wasn’t an accident or coincidence. The killer was sending her a message—that Cooper would meet the same gruesome fate she would.

  She shouldn’t have married him. If anyone was holding Stephen for ransom, they would have asked for it before now. She didn’t need the money. She needed Cooper.

  But she couldn’t have both.

  She really couldn’t have either—not without risking Cooper’s life. He had been risking his life for years, but that was his choice. She didn’t want him risking it for her.

  She pressed a gentle kiss to his shoulder. He shifted against the mattress and murmured as if even that soft brush of her lips hurt him. But he didn’t awaken. Maybe they had given him pain medication at the hospital that had finally gotten him to sleep.

  Or knocked him out.

  She was counting on the latter. She edged farther away from him and then rolled off the side of the mattress. The light of dawn wasn’t bright enough yet for her to find her clothes without feeling around in the dark. So she felt around on the floor, and her fingers fumbled over something cold and hard. Revulsion had her stomach pitching over finding the gun.

  She had nearly shot Cooper. Fortunately, she hadn’t known how to aim the thing. She kept her hand on the weapon and considered taking it. But with what she was about to do, hopefully she wouldn’t need it anymore.

  If the money was what had put her in danger, she didn’t want it. She wanted nothing to do with it. Or with Cooper’s gun.

  Until everyone learned what she’d done, he might need it to protect himself. She passed over the gun and grabbed up her clothes. As quickly and quietly as she could, she dressed.

  Cooper was going to be angry over what she was about to do. But she would rather go out alone and risk her life than put him in danger again.

  She leaned back over the bed, but this time she pressed her lips to his cheek. He was out, so he probably would not hear her. But she needed to tell him what she’d been too cowardly to declare when he was awake. She needed to know that she had at last said the words. So she whispered them into his ear.

  “I love you.”

  She waited to see if he murmured anything back—not that she expected him to return her feelings. He’d pointed out over and over again that he was only doing his job. She wasn’t paying him, but she was definitely going to fire him.

  She glanced to the door but remembered how Candace had appeared in the hall the minute Tanya had stepped out of the room. She couldn’t go out the door.

  So she would have to go out the way Cooper had come in—through the window. He’d left it unlatched, so all she had to do was press her hands against the glass and push up the sash. Cool air blew through the opening, lifting the rumpled sheet that barely covered Cooper’s naked body.

  She held her breath, afraid that he would wake up and stop her. But he didn’t move—not even to cover himself. Was he really all right? He’d left the hospital against doctor’s orders. Maybe she shouldn’t leave him…

  But then her leaving him was exactly what she needed to do in order to keep him safe. She lifted one leg over the windowsill, but her foot met only empty space. Candace had said there was a ledge. She drew her foot closer to the brick wall of the apartment building, and she found it—six or so skinny inches of concrete. She turned her foot sideways and set it firmly on the ledge before crawling out through the window.

  She clutched at the brick wall as dizziness overwhelmed her. She shouldn’t have looked down—because now she could look nowhere else. Her knees trembled and her heart raced.

  The apartment was on the third floor of the building. Until then—staring down into the abyss of the alley—Tanya hadn’t realized how far up three stories was. Nor had she considered how far she would fall if she slipped.

  Hitting the asphalt from the height of a loading dock could have broken Cooper’s back. Hitting it from this height would probably break every bone in her body.

  Already bruised and wounded, Cooper had sidled across this ledge to get to her. Why? Only to protect her?

  Just how seriously did the man take his job?

  Too seriously—when it was likely to get him killed. She had to do this, had to save him from saving her. Because she didn’t want to wake him with the cool breeze, she maneuvered around on the ledge enough to push down the window. She couldn’t lower it completely—not without bending all the way over, and if she did that, she would fall for certain. But crouching down strained the muscles in her already shaking legs and her feet began to slip.

  Clutching at the wall again, she regained her tenuous position on the ledge. And inch by inch she sidled across it toward the fire escape. It was exactly three dark windows over—probably twelve feet. But to Tanya, who was freezing with cold and fright, it may as well have been a mile. She panted and shook as if she’d run twenty.

  Her hands were cold and nearly numb from scraping across the brick wall when she reached out for the railing of the fire escape. Her fingers slipped, knocking her off balance so much that her foot began to slide off the ledge.

  Had she made it all those feet only to fall now—when she was so close to the fire escape? The killer would be thrilled—he wouldn’t have to try to shoot her or poison her anymore. Tanya was going to kill herself with her probably misguided attempt to save the man she loved.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cooper hated sleeping because usually his dreams haunted him with memories of things he had seen or done, things that he was almost able to forget when he was awake. But now he awakened with a smile and a good memory.

  Of making love with Tanya.

  And of her saying, “I love you.”

  He must have dreamed that—must have imagined her whispering those words into his ear. Until a few days ago, she had been engaged to marry another man. It didn’t matter that Cooper was the one she had actually wed; he was only a substitute for the man she really loved.

  The smile slid away from his face, and he forced open eyes that felt gritty with sleep and probably the aftereffects of the painkillers.

  The meds had worn off, because his back ached like hell. And his ribs protested every breath he drew into his lungs. And he sucked in a deep breath as he scanned the empty room.

  She was gone. Had someone grabbed her while he slept? The window was open a few inches—more than he’d left it when he’d come inside that way. And the gun was still inside its holster next to the bed. He reached for it.

  If someone had broken in while he slept, wouldn’t she have used it just as she’d tried using it the night she’d almost shot him? Tanya was tough; she wouldn’t have survived all the attempts on her life if she wasn’t.

  Maybe she had opened the window for air. Or because he’d gotten too hot sharing the only full
-size bed with her. He wasn’t hot now, with the cool wind blowing over his bare skin. He hurriedly dressed, ignoring the twinges in his back and ribs, as he pulled on the clothes he’d discarded so quickly the night before.

  Her clothes were gone—just as she was. But with the sun only just streaking between the buildings and shining across that open windowsill, it was early yet. Not much past dawn.

  He hadn’t given her much choice last night before jumping into bed with her. But she had seemed willing then. His skin flushed with heat and desire as he remembered how thoroughly she had made love to him. She had definitely been willing.

  So where was she? He opened the door and stepped into the hall. Voices drew him toward the kitchen, where he hoped to find her with the others, sitting around the small round table or leaning against the cabinets. Nikki sat at the table staring at the screen of the laptop in front of her, while Parker leaned back, the chair on two legs, against the wall, with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

  Logan reclined against the cabinets, his arms crossed over his chest, like a teacher surveying his class. As the oldest, he’d always thought he knew more than the rest of them. But that was probably just because he kept what he knew secret—like the death of their father’s killer.

  Cooper would deal with that later, though. He was more concerned with who wasn’t in the kitchen than who was. Candace was missing, which was odd since this was her place. But she could have been in the bathroom or her bedroom.

  Tanya was gone. And he knew it because of how empty and alone he felt even with his family present. They glanced at him in the doorway, but there was no surprise on their faces. They’d known where he’d gone after checking himself out of the hospital.

  What about Tanya? “Where is she?”

  And a better question, why were they all there when the person they were supposed to be protecting wasn’t? What kind of bodyguards were Payne Protection?

  “Did somebody—” his voice cracked with emotion “—take her?” While he’d slept peacefully in the same bed with her? What the hell kind of bodyguard was he?

  “Nobody grabbed her,” Logan assured him. “Candace saw her leave of her own accord.”