The Bride's Bodyguard

by Beth Cornelison

  Jake’s shoulder gouged her belly. His fingers dug into her thighs. His feet and the ground filled her line of sight with a dizzying blur of motion. The bright sunshine and thick humidity of the Louisiana summer day beat down on them as he ran toward the front driveway.

  A beautiful day for my wedding, she’d thought that morning when she arrived at the church. The perfect day for my perfect wedding.

  Now bile and adrenaline soured her stomach and threatened to come up as she clung to Jake for dear life. The surreal screams from her friends and family, under assault in the sanctuary she’d been dragged away from, faded as they made their escape.

  But the deafening gunfire followed them. A series of blasts thundered through the air. Paige winced as bits of concrete flew up at her when bullets peppered the ground. Bullets aimed at her and at Jake.

  “Start the engine! Go, go, go!” Jake shouted to someone. He staggered to a stop, but before she could catch her breath or regain her bearings, he dumped her, unceremoniously, onto the backseat of the bridal limo.

  “Let’s move!” Jake yelled.

  She battled away the curtain of ivory satin that had her tangled in an awkward knot, obscuring her vision. As she scooted across the seat, righting herself and restoring air to her jostled lungs, Jake lunged onto the seat beside her. He swung a handgun out the open car door and fired a couple of earsplitting shots. The limo driver hit the gas, and they rocketed down the church driveway, even before Jake had closed the limo door.

  As the limo hurtled down the streets of Lagniappe, weaving through traffic and taking turns at a high speed, Paige was tossed about like a sock in the dryer. Her mind spun as well, reeling from the macabre turn of events. Her wedding had become a bloodbath. Brent had been shot. And her groom’s high school friend, a man she’d met only four days ago, had bodily carried her out of harm’s way like some tuxedoed superhero.

  Dear God, was her sister hurt? Her parents? Her friends? And poor Mr. Diggle had been murdered in cold blood!

  She must be dreaming. If this is some anxiety-induced nightmare, please let me wake up now!

  For the first time, Paige said a prayer of thanks that her youngest sister hadn’t been at the wedding after all. At least Paige knew Zoey was safe.

  The limo’s back window shattered. Startled by the loud crash and rain of broken glass, Paige screamed.

  “Get down!” Jake palmed her head and shoved her to the floor, covering her with his massive body. His weight pressed her back into the plush carpeting and biting shards of the window while his rock-hard chest and wide shoulders ground against the galloping beat of her heart. The heat of his exertion and the faint scent of sandalwood surrounded her. Despite the hell breaking loose around her, the solid wall of his body created a warm cocoon where, for a few moments, she felt marginally protected, fractionally less frightened.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, only to see haunting images of Brent’s blood, spraying bullets and crushed flowers. Chaos, death and destruction. At her wedding. She shuddered.

  You know what we want, Scofield.

  Keep the bead safe at all costs.

  Why had Jake brought a gun to the wedding? Had he expected trouble?

  Who were those armed men, and what was Brent’s link to them?

  None of it made sense.

  “Hit the highway out of town and don’t stop until you’re sure you’ve lost them!” Jake shouted to the driver.

  Time kaleidoscoped, and Paige couldn’t be sure if she’d huddled beneath Jake’s protective cover for one minute or twenty. When the assault of gunfire stopped, he rolled off of her and sat back to take off his tux jacket and rip open the shirt at his throat. Her gaze gravitated to the pulse throbbing on his thick neck. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth and eased forward to peer over the backseat.

  She rubbed the spot at her temple where her head pounded.

  “I think we lost them.” Jake expelled a deep breath of relief as he pushed up to the seat at the back of the limo. He raked a hand through his short, inky-black hair and lifted a penetrating gaze to her. “Are you all right?”

  Paige could only stare back at him, too stunned, too shaken, too confused by the violent attack at her wedding to know what to do or say. This kind of thing was only supposed to happen in the movies, not in real life. Not in her staid, well-planned, organized, boring life.

  Jake extended a large hand to her. She studied the crimson smears on his fingers, and her stomach roiled. “You have blood on your hand. Brent’s blood,” she said stupidly, still too shell-shocked to edit her thoughts for statements of the obvious.

  But Jake didn’t laugh off or dismiss her banal comment. Instead, his expression darkened, and his jaw tightened. “I did what I thought was best, considering I was outnumbered, outgunned and had the lives of three hundred of your friends and relatives to factor in to my response to those thugs,” he said bitterly. He massaged his knee and winced. “I know I screwed up. I know your fiancé is likely dead because of my screwup.”

  Paige’s breath hitched, and a sharp ache sliced through her. Brent could be dead.

  Jake jerked his gaze to the side window and huffed. His nostrils flared, and pain flooded his face for a moment before he schooled his expression and turned back to her. “I’m sorry.”

  She blinked, saying nothing for long seconds, realizing he’d taken her comment as condemnation and accusation. His tortured expression, his guilty confession twisted in her chest.

  “I—I only meant…you have blood—” She pointed to his hands, then stopped when she saw the blood on her own fingers. She gaped at the red stains, her stomach seesawing as she discovered the smears on her dress, as well—the garish reminder of the violence she’d witnessed, of her futile attempts to help Brent when he’d been shot, of the unknown carnage she’d left at the church. It was her wedding. Didn’t that make it her responsibility to see to the safety of her guests? How could she flee like a coward and leave everyone else to die?

  And what choice in the matter had Jake given her, hauling her away like a duffel bag over his shoulder?

  “Are you hurt?” Jake repeated, his tone demanding.

  Paige drew a slow breath, forcing air into lungs paralyzed by shock, terror and grief. “I—I don’t know.” She looked up at Jake, needing answers. “What just happened? How…Why…?”

  He leaned forward and put a hand under her elbow, helping her off the limo floor and onto the long seat ninety degrees from where he sat. “Good question. The sooner we get those answers, the better I’ll be able to protect you and the bead.”

  “Protect me?”

  Jake gave her a tight nod. “Those are my orders. That’s what Brent asked just before we made our big exit.”

  “Your orders?” She hated sounding like some parrot, repeating everything Jake said, but her brain was still struggling to comprehend the horror of the past half hour and make sense of the insanity. “Who the hell are you really? And why did you think you had to bring a gun to my wedding?”

  Jake flexed and balled his hand restlessly. “I really am an old friend of Brent’s. But not his best friend—just the one with the most military training. He hired me a couple weeks ago to protect him until after the wedding. My being his best man was my cover. So you wouldn’t ask questions.”

  Paige shook her head, more confused than ever. “Then…why are you here instead of protecting him?”

  “Didn’t you hear what he said before we made our exit? He told me to hide you and keep the bead safe at all costs.” He narrowed a sharp gaze on her and extended his hand. “In fact, you should give me the bead for safekeeping.”

  Her head throbbed, and she swallowed the urge to scream her frustration with the endless riddles. “What bead?”

  Jake’s jaw tightened, and his dark eyes reflected his own frustration and impatience with the situation. “The one the terrorists who crashed your party were after, of course! The one you’re protecting for Brent. Give it to me.” He wiggled h
is fingers, urging her compliance. “Come on, Paige. Brent asked me to guard it. He said something about national security.”

  Paige barked a humorless laugh. “What does some bead have to do with national security? And what makes you think I have this…this bead?”

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Jake massaged his right knee again and exhaled an irritated huff.

  “Brent said you have what those guys who shot him were after,” he said quietly, clearly struggling to keep his tone calm, though tension vibrated from him in palpable waves. “That’s why I got you out of the church so fast. According to Brent, you have what the terrorists want, and it is my job to keep this bead—whatever it is—safe.”

  His wording smacked her between the eyes, and she flopped back on the seat, her chest aching, as if from a physical blow. “That’s what he said? Keep the bead safe? That’s why you hustled me out of there so fast? Why you risked your life to save me?”

  Protect the bead. Not her. She was merely a pawn in Brent’s dangerous secret agenda.

  Jake rolled his eyes and groaned. “Isn’t that what I just said? This conversation is getting old, Paige. Just give me the bead, okay?”

  Something inside her snapped. Her patience, her composure, her illusions of her safe, orderly world shattered, and she grabbed her head, fisting her hands in her hair, further destroying the salon styling she’d received that morning. “I don’t have any bead! I don’t know what Brent thinks I have or why he told you I have it!” She hated her shrill tone, her loss of control. But getting shot at, learning the safety of some bead was more important to your fiancé than your safety, having your entire world thrown into chaos did that to a girl. “I don’t know why armed men attacked my wedding! And I don’t know why my fiancé thinks he has something to do with national security! None of this makes sense to me!”

  Jake’s head snapped up, his attention drawn to something out the back window.

  “What—”

  Before she could finish her question, he grabbed her arm and yanked her back toward the floor. Paige gritted her teeth. She was getting tired of his manhandling.

  “Stay down!” he shouted as he lowered the side window and leveled his handgun at some threat outside.

  She heard the roar of an engine, too loud and high-pitched to be a car. It sounded more like a motorcycle. Then a hail of bullets hammered the limo, shattering more windows and pocking the far wall of the back compartment.

  “I thought you said we’d lost them!”

  Jake spared her only a brief glance. “Clearly, they found us again.”

  He pitched backward as the limo veered suddenly and bumped along the shoulder. His eyes widened, and he bit out a curse. Lunging forward, he climbed over her and shouted, “Hold on to something! Our driver’s been hit.”

  Jake turned on the seat and rocked backward. With a hard kick, he knocked out the Plexiglas window partition between them and the front seat.

  Paige scrambled across the floor, groping for a handhold as the vehicle swerved and bumped. She grabbed the pit of a wet-bar cup holder over her head and braced her feet on the long side seat on the opposite side of the compartment. Jake slid headfirst through the opening he’d created, dragging the driver—oh, God, was he dead?—off the steering wheel and into the passenger seat.

  Paige bit down hard on her bottom lip, praying for a miracle, praying she and Jake weren’t about to be shot or killed in a car crash. Praying she’d wake up from this far-too-realistic nightmare.

  Bile rose in her throat, and tears burned her eyes as two truths clarified in her mind.

  Brent was involved in something terrible and clan destine.

  And her fiancé’s dangerous secret might cost her her life.

  Chapter 2

  Jake fought the limo back under control and steered onto the highway. Checking the mirrors for any more surprise assailants, he took the first exit and headed in the opposite direction from the way the motorcyclist departed.

  At his earliest opportunity, Jake pulled the limo off the road and stopped long enough to check the driver for signs of life. He pressed his fingers to the man’s carotid artery, despite the glaring hole in his head that screamed proof that the driver was dead.

  Paige appeared at the windowless gap between the front and back seats. “Why’d we stop? Is the driver—?”

  “Don’t look,” he barked, harsher than he needed to, but tension had him wound tight. Tact was not at the top of his priorities at the moment. “Get down and stay there. You don’t need this image in your head, and I don’t know when we may get attacked again.”

  The rustle of satin and lace told him she’d complied.

  “So what do we do now? Where are we going?” The tremble of fear in her voice sucker punched his gut.

  “This is a work in progress, darlin’. I’ll tell you when I know. First thing we have to do is get rid of this limo. It’s conspicuous as hell.” He whipped a quick glance over his shoulder to the backseat. Paige’s wide green eyes made her look vulnerable, yet he also saw keen intelligence and stubborn determination in her expression that told him she was no frail flower that would wilt at any moment. Good. If this situation was half as dangerous as the past thirty minutes purported, she’d need a little starch in her to survive the coming days. “First thing you need to do is lose the dress.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, her tone rife with offense.

  He dismissed her misunderstanding with a twist of his mouth and a short sigh. “You do have other clothes, don’t you? Like in a suitcase in the trunk? Packed for your honeymoon?”

  “Oh…right.”

  He heard her embarrassment in her voice, and though he kept his eyes on the road, he imagined her ivory cheeks, flushed red as they had been the night before at the rehearsal dinner when she was the butt of her friends’ and family’s good-natured ribbing. Her modesty and discomfiture had struck him as unusual for a woman with so much going for her—beauty, brains, wealth, ambition and family and friends who clearly adored her. Most women he knew with so much going for them seemed to feel they were entitled to their privileged lives.

  For someone who’d scraped and fought for everything he had, such arrogance was a huge turnoff to Jake.

  He cleared his throat. “Not only is the dress conspicuous when we need to blend, it’s hardly made for speed if we have to make a break for it on foot again.” He searched the side of the road for a place where he could hide the limo.

  “Do you think we will…have to flee on foot, I mean?”

  He met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know what we may be up against. But we need to be ready for anything, and we can’t call attention to ourselves. They’ll be looking for us. So we’ve got to go to ground until we either figure out what they want,” he said thinking aloud, “or know for certain they’re not hot on our asses anymore.”

  “We should just call the police and let them handle it.”

  “Can’t. Scofield said Homeland was compromised. I assume he means Homeland Security, which is exactly who the police will call if they think national security is at stake.” He shook his head. “For now, at least, we do this alone.”

  Jake spotted a vacant gas station and parked the limo behind it, out of sight of the road. Hauling himself out of the front seat, he clenched his teeth in pain as his bum knee, the reason the navy had kicked him out of the SEALs, throbbed a protest. Sprinting for the limo with an extra hundred or so pounds over his shoulder hadn’t been kind to his old injury. Refusing to let his pain get in the way of his duty, he tried not to limp as he retrieved a floral-print suitcase from the trunk.

  When he yanked open the back door of the limo, she gasped.

  “I assume this one’s yours.”

  Paige pressed a hand to her chest and sucked in several deep, restorative breaths that drew attention to the low neckline of her dress and the gentle swell of cleavage the dress had clearly been designed to maximize.

  A hot stab of lust jabbed him in the gills,
and he gritted his teeth. Now was hardly the time to get distracted by Paige’s assets.

  “Yeah, that’s mine.” She reached for the luggage, and he batted her hand away before setting the suitcase flat on the seat.

  “Pick something practical that you don’t mind getting dirty. Something you can run in, even sleep in if necessary. That includes shoes. No high heels.”

  “What about you? Your tux doesn’t say blend in or ready for action to me.”

  “Well, a tux isn’t my first choice of attire for this debacle either. But since I’m a good six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than Scofield, I doubt anything he had packed will fit me, so I’ll have to make do for now.”

  She glanced away and worried her bottom lip with her teeth.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “What’s that look for?”

  “I…need to call someone—my dad or my sister Holly—to see how Brent is. To see what happened after we left, to make sure everyone else is all right, to—” Her words caught on a sob, and her face crumpled. “Oh, God. Mr. Diggle was murdered! At my wedding! I—I can’t even stand to think of anyone else being hurt…or worse. And B-Brent—”

  She dissolved into tears, and Jake’s gut pitched. He could handle blood and bullets. But tears left him floundering like a plebe on his first day of training.

  Not that he couldn’t understand her concern. She had every right to be upset about her family’s safety, about her fiancé’s condition. He rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his tux pants and slid onto the seat beside her. Taking her by the arm, he pulled her onto his lap and gave her back an awkward pat.