The Runaway Bride

by Adrianne Lee

  Laura turned back toward the window, hugging herself. If Don and Susan were the ones after her, they’d have no trouble keeping Jake in the dark. All they had to do was cover for each other.

  “Why don’t you get out of Jake’s life for good?” Susan asked near her shoulder. Laura started, then lurched around. Susan spoke in a whisper, but her eyes roared with hatred. “I can’t believe you’d think he still wanted you. Or that he’d bail you out of whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “That’s not why I came to him.” Laura kept her own voice low.

  “Oh, of course not,” Susan hissed. “You drove all the way to Mesa in a stolen car just to make a pile of phony accusations.”

  Laura knew she should let the insults roll off her back, but her temper rose hot and furious inside her, spilling out. “Everything I’ve said is true and I have proof.”

  The men spun around at that.

  “Then show it to us,” Susan challenged.

  Laura flushed. Horror slid through her. What was she thinking? Why had she said anything about the evidence she’d sent Ruthanne? “I—I can’t. Yet. But it does exist.”

  She glanced at Jake, saying a quick prayer that that was true.

  Don rose from the chair, towering over her, reminding her how small she was. How easy it would be for him to break her in half. “Where’d you get this so-called evidence? And what is it?”

  Laura’s stomach flopped, the coffee and banana doing an unpleasant dance. She cursed her quick temper, fervently wishing she hadn’t mentioned the proof. “It’s obvious you don’t believe me—so why should I tell you?”

  Susan cocked her head to one side. “I’ll bet Cullen and she dreamed up this scheme. Where is Cullen?”

  Laura blanched.

  “We don’t know.” Jake seemed to realize her distress and came to her rescue. There was something in the look he sent her that said he wanted to believe her. He glanced at his partners. “She didn’t run off with Cullen.”

  “But the note…?” Don frowned.

  Jake shrugged. “Cullen’s family hasn’t heard from him in over a year.”

  Don’s frown deepened. Laura couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or acting.

  Susan gestured with her hands. “Did Laura tell you that?”

  “No,” Jake said. “Travis did.”

  “That’s weird.” She fell silent a moment, then glanced at Laura. “Where could he have gone?”

  Jake answered, “The day he disappeared, he’d just finished analyzing a sample of Murphy’s cream and comparing it with New Again.”

  Laura stiffened. She wished he’d kept that information between the two of them, but she realized Jake trusted his partners, even if she had her doubts.

  “And?” Susan asked. “What was the result?”

  Laura lifted her chin. “The two creams were identical.”

  “You expect us to take your word for that?” Susan didn’t want to believe, her mind obviously set to reject anything Laura said.

  “Where’d you get a sample of your uncle’s cream?” Don asked. Beneath his tan, his face seemed two shades paler. “Everything was destroyed in the explosion.”

  “She doesn’t have any sample, Don.” Susan shook her head, her eyes narrowing as she spun toward Laura accusingly. “I know what’s going on here—the real reason you contacted Jake.”

  Laura’s dander reared again. “Oh? What is that?”

  Susan pointed her finger at Laura, its nail painted red with some sort of sparkling golden design. “You’ve filed a lawsuit.”

  “What?” Laura shook her head, at a loss to understand what Susan was talking about.

  “A claim against Dell,” she added. “Haven’t you?”

  Laura blinked and stepped back. All three of them were staring at her, expecting her to say it was true. Even Jake, she saw, feeling oddly disappointed in him.

  He was scowling hard, his scar vivid. He swallowed as if he had a tennis ball stuck in his throat. “Laura?”

  She shook her head. “No, I—”

  “Forget it, sweetheart.” Don took a step toward her. “We owe Payton Dell big-time for letting us invest in this product at its inception. We aren’t going to help you do him dirty.”

  “I’m not suing Dell,” Laura finally managed. But even as the words left her mouth, she realized she very well could. That to keep her from doing exactly that, someone was determined to kill her. Her knees turned liquid.

  She fought the distress. She’d be damned if she’d fall apart in front of Don and Susan. Her determination seemed to clear her head, and she decided to push Susan further and see what happened. “I guess I could sue Payton, couldn’t I?”

  “You know damned well you could,” Susan growled, her cheeks turning a bright red.

  Jake broke in. “Ah, come on, Sue. Enough of this. It’s not going to settle anything. Maybe we can all discuss it at another time…when cooler heads prevail?”

  Don and Susan exchanged a look that suggested they both thought Jake had lost his senses. Don seemed ready to argue it out. He opened his mouth, then changed his mind and muttered, “The hell with it.” He strode to his wife and caught her arm. “We’ve got to arrange a sitter for Sarah. The Texas oilman called, Jake. He decided to start his assault on the Vegas casinos tomorrow, instead of next month. We’ll be out of town all week.”

  As they walked past Laura, Susan said to her in a muted aside, “Make sure you’re gone by the time we return.”

  JAKE SAW HIS PARTNERS to the door, trying to pay attention to Don, who was telling him the particulars of the Vegas stint. Once they were gone, he returned to the office. Laura was standing with her back to him, facing the view, hugging herself as if she were terribly cold. He wanted to go to her. To apologize to her for Don’s and Susan’s rudeness. For his failure to stop them sooner.

  But he was so confused.

  How many times last year had Laura pleaded with him to reappraise the explosion of her aunt and uncle’s house? More times than he could count, he admitted, feeling small now for dismissing her slant on the case as prejudicial. The truth was, he’d been insulted that she could even question whether he’d done a thorough investigation of the accident. Was that why he’d so readily disregarded her prattles about some discovery or other of Murphy Whittaker’s being a motive for murder?

  Cullen Crocker had not only listened to Laura, he’d tried to help her.

  Jake grimaced, realizing that some of what had happened between Laura and him could be laid at his own doorstep. He did a mental run-through of the facts he’d gathered on the accident, but his memory was sketchy on important details. Had he missed something? Had someone blown up the Whittaker house to cover a double murder? He decided to try to keep an open mind, and discovered he had a sudden, urgent need to see that case file again.

  He moved within inches of Laura, aching to touch her, to hold her, but knowing her trust had been shattered as completely as his own, he feared she might bolt. He kept his hands rigidly at his sides. “Tell me the rest of it, Laura.”

  She turned toward him, seeming startled to find him so close. Her smoky eyes searched his face. “Would you listen to me now any more than before? Or do you think I’m as bad as Susan suggests? That all I’m after is winning some lawsuit against Dell?”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me what happened. What made you suspicious?”

  “I was head of product acquisitions. I ordered all the supplies needed to produce New Again in its developmental stage. It struck me as coincidental that I’d ordered exactly the same supplies for my uncle weeks before he died.”

  “I see.” Jake had to admit—he’d have been suspicious, too.

  “How did you come by the evidence? As Don said, everything was destroyed in the accident.”

  He watched her twist her hands together, run her tongue along her plump, kissable lips.

  “It was the day before the wedding,” she said. “
I was packing for our…honeymoon.”

  The word seemed to catch on her breath and drop into the room like a rock, heavy with all the pain she and Jake had suffered, solid as the promise of all they might have had if only he’d listened to her pleas and set his ego and his pride aside.

  She sighed. “On my closet shelf I spotted the giftwrapped package Aunt May gave me for my bridal shower. As you know, the shower was to have been held the night the house exploded.”

  She stopped again, looking choked, ready to collapse. She drew a wobbly breath and unshed tears shone in her eyes. “Of course there was no shower, but Izzy kept the gifts and gave them to me later, privately. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to open the last thing Aunt May would ever give me.”

  Laura trembled, swayed slightly. Jake caught her by her upper arms and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist, but melded against him, still a perfect fit as only she had always been. His pulse kicked into high gear, desire singing through his veins.

  He fought it as she laid her head on his chest. His heart thumped so fiercely it had to be thundering in her ear. For a long moment, he held her close, his hands splayed across her back, her heart beating sharply against his palms.

  She leaned away from him, gazed up at him, her eyes free from tears now. Instead they held a smile, as though at some warm memory. “Aunt May had enclosed a note telling me not to open it until the day of the wedding. But at that moment, I just had to open it. The package contained a dozen sample bottles of Uncle Murphy’s Venus Masque. I contacted Cullen immediately and he promised to get right to the analysis.

  “I gave him one of the bottles.”

  She licked her lips again and Jake could barely keep from bending lower and taking possession of them.

  She said, “He called me the morning of our wedding. He was excited. He insisted I meet him at Dell Labs. He wanted to show me the results of his tests. Jake, I swear, the two creams were identical.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was stunned. I drove home as if in a fog, the full implication hitting me only as I reached my apartment. The first thing I did was try to find you. I called everyone I could think of. Left messages with them all.”

  She drew a ragged breath. “Half an hour later the phone rang. I was sure it was you. But it wasn’t.”

  His nerve endings jangled. “Tell me.”

  “The person on the phone told me they knew what I’d been doing at the lab and I was going to die like my aunt and uncle.”

  Jake’s breath left his lungs in a whoosh. “Did you recognize the voice?”

  She shook her head, her sable hair shifting like silk across her shoulders. “I don’t even know whether it was male or female.”

  “Cullen must have gotten a similar call.”

  She shivered in Jake’s arms. “Maybe he didn’t take it as seriously as I did.”

  Jake needed all his willpower to keep from surrendering to his desire to comfort Laura with his whole body. She was too vulnerable. He was too susceptible to her vulnerability. Dear God, he wanted to quell her anguish in the fire of his passion, wanted to bury himself deep inside her again and again until they were both too exhausted to think, to question, to fear.

  With a supreme struggle, he reined in his needs, but his voice rang with pent-up hunger even in his own ears. “Who did you speak with when you tried reaching me before the wedding?”

  She shuddered, and he supposed she’d gone over the list in her mind thousands of times.

  She moved out of his embrace. “Your mom. Your cousin Kim. Izzy.”

  He ached to pull her back, his body cooling where hers had touched it.

  Her breath puffed from her. “Travis. Ralph—”

  “Chief Russell?” Jake’s eyes widened. “My boss?”

  She nodded, then continued. “And Don and Susan.”

  “That’s it?” he asked, incredulity in his voice.

  “I didn’t talk to Payton, but one of the others might have.”

  “Just those seven people?” She didn’t answer, didn’t need to. Of course if there was someone else she would have told him. Jake felt like an anvil had landed on his chest. Was he really supposed to believe one of his family or friends had destroyed his wedding? His life? Had killed Laura’s aunt and uncle and two other people? Had tried killing Laura over and over again?

  His blood ran cold at the thought.

  And yet, could he afford to dismiss the possibility out of hand? Again? No, not after the last attempt on Laura’s life.

  She was clasping her hands so tightly in front of her that her knuckles were white. “What are we going to do?”

  It was a challenge more than a question. She was asking if he was with her or if she was on her own. He cocked his head to one side and rubbed his whiskered jaw. “I’m going to shave, shower and dress.”

  Her shoulders sagged, disappointment and frustration issuing from her like a powerful perfume.

  With the pad of his thumb, he brushed her quivering lower lip, aching to kiss it. He gave her a wry grin, instead. “Then I guess we should go to Riverdell and look for that evidence.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jake stood in his shower, cold water beating down on him, washing away the raging desire he found harder and harder to control. As his ardor cooled, he made no move to adjust the tap, just stood there lost in thought. The icy droplets pelted his flesh, as relentless and stinging as Laura’s implied accusation about his friends and family. If she was right, this all revolved around New Again.

  The person who’d benefited most from that was undoubtedly Payton Dell. But Jake didn’t believe the man capable of murder, not even of hiring someone to kill Laura. Air whistled through Jake’s pursed lips. His years in law enforcement had taught him few killers looked the part, but damn it, he knew Payton. Knew him well. If not Payton…who?

  He shivered, uncertain whether his goose bumps were from the cold water or his chilling thoughts. He bumped the tap to warm, lathered his washcloth and began scrubbing his flesh with a fury. If not Payton…who? he asked himself again.

  His partner and oldest friend? He couldn’t believe it Admittedly, Don had his faults—unmitigated selfishness, for one—but that didn’t make him evil, or a murderer. He sure as hell wasn’t stupid. If he was behind this, he’d never flaunt his open hostility toward Laura and risk suspicion falling on him—should something happen to her.

  Susan was too smart for that, too. Besides, he’d bet the Texan’s Vegas winnings that Don and Susan didn’t believe anyone was after Laura. They seemed convinced Jake was an idiot to believe a word out of her mouth.

  God, that glorious mouth. Laura’s image flashed into his mind, bringing memories of last night’s kiss. He’d been so relieved to see her, so furious with her, so completely out of control he’d nearly taken her then and there. She’d nearly let him. He swallowed hard, recalling. Passion threatened anew. He tamped it down with a muted curse.

  He had to keep focused. Had to find the bad apple in this barrel. If it wasn’t Payton, or Susan, or Don…who? Izzy, Payton’s kid sister? That made little sense. She’d been dating Cullen, and she seemed as heartbroken as Jake when they assumed Laura had left town with Cullen. Izzy’s motives seemed divided. On the one hand, she’d become even richer than before. On the other, she’d lost her best friend and lover.

  Maybe Jake wanted Izzy to be guilty. Maybe he just wanted the person least close to him to be responsible for the hell he’d been living.

  He shut off the water and stepped from the shower, jerking a towel from the bar. Travis? He couldn’t imagine a Crocker killing one of their own. Besides, what had Travis gained by Cullen’s absence and the success of New Again? Jake dried and dressed. Who else had Laura mentioned? His cousin Kim? That was laughable. The most vicious thing she was capable of was keeping the gossip about Laura and Cullen alive.

  He ran a comb through his wet hair. Splashed on aftershave, wincing as it stung his cheeks. The scent filled the room. He’d changed
brands after Laura left. Never wanted anything to remind him of her as the Old Spice had.

  Now he couldn’t get her out of his mind and he’d associate this scent with her after she was gone, only because he’d worn it while she was here. Hell, how had he been sucked into returning to Riverdell? Again, Laura’s face filled his mind. She’d looked so forlorn. He’d been unable to resist the impulse to help her at any cost to himself.

  “Damn it.” Were Don and Susan right? Was he the world’s biggest fool? What had he gotten himself into? Distaste lodged in his mouth. He didn’t want to step foot in Riverdell. Didn’t want to face any of the men he’d worked with…who’d laughed behind his back when Laura ran out on him.

  He tossed his dirty clothes into the hamper and dropped the lid with a thump. The only man on the force he wouldn’t mind seeing was his former chief, Ralph Russell. Another of Laura’s suspects. He started toward the kitchen, drawn by the aroma of fried bacon. Ralph had run the least corrupt department Jake had ever seen. Not to mention he’d been Murphy Whittaker’s best friend. That left his mom. At this, Jake did laugh.

  Laura glanced up, a quizzical frown furrowing her lovely brow as she stirred eggs in a frying pan at his stove. He sobered, caught by how natural she looked here. His chest filled, then seemed to freeze, leaving him unable to exhale. He didn’t want memories of Laura infusing every corner of his mind, visions of her in every corner of his house. He’d thrived here because there were no reminders of her.

  Ever after this, his sanctuary would be tainted by her presence, her essence.

  Would the memories be melancholy or painful? It depended on what they discovered in Riverdell. He swallowed over the lump in his throat. Would the trip be a wild-goose chase? Or would they find Laura’s evidence among his mother’s belongings? Doubt reached icy fingers around his heart. What if it wasn’t there? What the hell would he do then? Was this innocent-looking woman going to make a fool of him twice in twelve months?