by Lisa Childs
Damn, maybe those six months had conditioned him for pain—because that was all she would bring him. In order to protect himself and not reveal how vulnerable he was to her, he said, “I’m worried that your father will kill me if anything happens to you. I promised him that I would keep you safe.”
She nodded as if his explanation made sense. But then she said, “You don’t work for my father anymore.”
Giving up the job he’d loved working for a man he’d respected had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Losing her had been harder.
“I work for Payne Protection,” he said. But that might not be for much longer if anything had happened to Nikki or Penny. His boss wouldn’t just fire him; he’d kill him. “It’s my job to keep you safe.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I’ll hide—like you said. I’ll make sure nobody finds me.”
He nodded and turned to leave. Before he could walk away, she grabbed his arm. Maybe she’d changed her mind; maybe she wanted him to bring her to safety.
“If you’re scared, I can get you out of here,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m not scared for me.”
“Of course.” And she wasn’t, or she wouldn’t have considered going up to that chapel where Andrea probably waited for her with a loaded weapon and a pair of scissors. “You’re worried about your father. And Richard.” He couldn’t help the resentment that slipped into his voice with that last word. She shook her head again, and that curly, sexy hair tumbled around her shoulders. She was so damn beautiful.
“I’m scared for you...” She rose up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss against his lips. He couldn’t help himself; he clutched a handful of that soft hair and held her mouth against his as he deepened the kiss. Passion pooled in his stomach, knotting muscles that were already clenched with adrenaline. Finally, he pulled back. And panting for breath, he rushed down the hall. He wasn’t sure now if he was running to danger or away from it.
Because he knew Megan Lynch was the greatest threat to him. No one had ever been able to cause him more pain.
* * *
An elbow jabbed his ribs. A heel stomped on his foot. A woman struggled in Woodrow’s arms, too, like the gunwoman had just struggled with her partner inside the chapel.
“Let me go,” she mumbled against the hand he had clamped over mouth.
“Shh,” he cautioned Penny.
They couldn’t afford to draw any attention to where they hid in that coatroom just off the vestibule. He had pulled her into the room with him just as she’d tried to storm into the chapel. “You can’t go in there.”
Bursting in there, surprising already nervous gunmen, was certain to get her shot. “It’s too dangerous,” he said.
Maybe he’d gotten through to her, because she finally stopped struggling. But the second he released her, she headed for the door. He caught her shoulders and dragged her back into his arms.
“You think I’m going to stand in here and watch my daughter get killed?” she asked, her body bristling with outrage while it also trembled with fear.
He held her more closely, so that he felt her furiously beating heart against his. “She’s not getting killed.” At least not yet.
“The guy stopped his wife from shooting her,” he pointed out. And as they watched through one of the lighter colors of the stained glass window between the coatroom and the church, the guy stopped her again. “If Nikki thought she was going to shoot her, she would draw her weapon.”
But she’d left it holstered beneath her dress. Of course if she’d reached for it, Woodrow doubted the man would have stopped his wife. D would have let the woman blow her away. Nikki was so smart that she would have realized that, too.
“I also have a couple of other guys in there,” he said. He wasn’t certain how much help the minister or Tucker Allison would be. Neither of them had reached for their weapons yet, either, and he suspected it had nothing to do with Nikki’s reasons.
They were just scared. Nikki, on the other hand, was fearless. She would make a damn good agent, a far better one than Tucker. She just had to survive this damn wedding. Concern for her was why he’d stopped himself from going any further than the coatroom. He could trust Gage to make sure Megan stayed safe; he needed to protect Penny’s daughter.
“I need to go in there,” Penny said as she renewed her struggle, pushing her breasts against his chest, her hips against his.
He swallowed a groan. How the hell could he even think about how good she felt now? When they were all in so much danger?
“You can’t go storming in there,” he said. “You’ll get everyone shot—most especially yourself.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” she asked, her voice cracking with raw emotion. “Just let my daughter die?”
“Penny...” Her pain reached inside him, twisting his heart around in his chest. And even though he had no way of knowing if he could keep it, he promised her, “Everything will be all right.”
She shook her head. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your daughter in there.” Resentment joined the fear in her voice.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not my daughter in there.”
“Is that why you don’t want me going in there?” she asked. “You know that when they see that I got loose, they’ll realize she did, too?”
Panic stole his breath for a moment. “What? You two were caught?” Of course that explained why Penny wasn’t out in the courtyard. Probably neither was Megan. “You didn’t get outside?”
She turned toward him, and her eyes warmed. “Megan probably is now, though. Gage would have made her go.”
He expelled a slight breath. “Thank you.” Even as upset as she was, she had offered him reassurance. She was that sweet a woman.
But then her resentment returned as she turned away and peered through the stained glass window. “I never should have let Nikki act as a decoy.”
“Our children don’t always do what we want them to,” he said. “Or what we think is best.” And as he said it, his stomach lurched, because he knew Megan wasn’t out in the courtyard.
Megan wasn’t safe yet.
While Penny was focused on the chapel, Woodrow studied the door from the coatroom into the vestibule. He wasn’t worried about anyone discovering them. The guy dressed like a waiter walked right past the room without glancing once in their direction.
Gage nearly passed, too, until Woodrow jerked him inside and demanded to know, “Why the hell did you leave her?”
“We heard the shot,” Gage said. “And she wanted me to make sure you were all right.”
Dread churned Woodrow’s stomach. She wouldn’t have left, then. She would be waiting somewhere, waiting to find out how he was. Or worse yet, knowing his loving daughter, she was probably on her way up the stairs to check herself because she had never trusted Gage.
Apparently, Woodrow shouldn’t have trusted him, either.
Chapter 14
Megan tilted her head and listened. She could hear no sounds emanating from above the storage area where she stood frozen with fear and indecision. The chapel was almost eerily silent after that one startling gunshot.
Who had been shot? Or was it just like Gage suspected, a trick to draw them out? But it had only drawn out him—at her urging. Had she sent Gage alone into danger?
And worse yet, she hadn’t told him how she felt about him. What if something happened and he never knew?
She’d spent those six months thinking that she’d missed her opportunity to let him know how much he really meant to her. And that last argument had echoed inside her head all those long months.
“I know you were just using me, trying to get ahead with my father,” she’d said. “But that’s okay. I was just using you, too.”
“You were using me?” he’d asked. And his obvious surprise had made her angrier. She’d figured he’d thought her too ugly and stupid to be able to use anyone. But now she wondered if he hadn’t just been confuse
d.
“I used you for sex,” she’d explained. “I knew you really didn’t want a chubby, unattractive girl like me...” Or she’d thought she should have known. It had taken a few people pointing it out to her before she’d realized and accepted that a man like him would never want a woman like her unless he was getting something else out of it.
Like a quick promotion...
“Megan.” He’d murmured her name and reached for her, like he’d intended to comfort her.
She’d jerked away, unable to let him touch her when she’d been hurting so badly. And out of that pain, she’d hurled those hateful words at him. “I never really loved you.”
Only with her whole heart. But she’d lied, out of pain and wounded pride. Even then she’d seen that it had hurt him.
“Why?” she murmured.
Why would it have hurt him if he hadn’t cared about her, if he’d only been using her? Wouldn’t he have just laughed off her declaration like it hadn’t mattered? He’d gotten the promotion he’d wanted—or she’d been told he’d wanted it. But if that was all he’d wanted, then why had he quit? Why had he walked away from a job he’d been willing to do anything—even romance her—to get ahead in?
Unless he hadn’t been using her...
Unless he really had cared, maybe even really loved her. And she’d tossed that love back at him, unwilling to accept that it was real and that he’d been telling the truth. She’d wounded not only his pride but his heart as well.
Was that why he had reenlisted and put his life in danger? Because of her?
Just like he’d done now. He’d put his life in danger again because she’d asked him to check on the others. If anything happened to him... Guilt and fear overwhelmed her. It was a miracle he’d survived. She shouldn’t have convinced him to tempt fate again.
She turned toward the boxes that Penny had begun to move. The door to the secret passageway was back there. She had promised Gage that she wouldn’t risk going outside alone in case there were more gunmen in the courtyard. If only she hadn’t lost Andrea’s gun. Or even the scissors she’d used to stab the other woman. Maybe Mrs. Payne had something in her office that Megan could use as a weapon. Knowing Mrs. Payne and the fact that all of her children were bodyguards, maybe she even had a real weapon that Megan could use.
It was still eerily quiet upstairs. No more gunshots had rung out. So Gage hadn’t fired at anyone or been fired at, unless someone had used Andrea’s gun with the silencer on the barrel.
If that gun had been used, they all might be dead. Pain and panic gripped her heart over the thought of losing the men she loved: her father and Gage. Or the women she’d already come to care about: Penny and Nikki. She wasn’t certain who else was in the chapel, who else could be in danger. She needed to know, so if she found a weapon, she would definitely head upstairs to help the others.
She hurried down the hall to Mrs. Payne’s office. Despite living in Chicago, she had made the trip to the wedding planner several times, not because she’d wanted everything to be perfect but because Mrs. Payne had given her something she’d never had.
Sure, Dad had tried. He’d been the best mother he could be. But he was no Penny Payne. He wasn’t capable of giving her the maternal understanding and female perspective that Penny had.
That was why she’d kept making the trip to meet with the wedding planner. So she knew which door opened off the hallway into Mrs. Payne’s office. Before she could close her hand over the knob, someone grabbed her arm.
Even before she looked up, she knew it wasn’t Gage. Her skin wasn’t tingling. But her heart was racing. With fear. The man’s grip was punishing.
“How the hell did you get free?” he asked her, his voice gruff with anger. He glanced down the hallway. “Where’s the other woman?”
“I don’t know.” Megan breathed a slight sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t caught Mrs. Payne. That didn’t mean that she hadn’t been caught, just as Megan had been caught.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked as he dragged her along the hall. His fingers pinched her arm, hurting her. But she held in a cry of pain.
He gave her an almost pitying glance. “I’m taking you to Andrea.”
And Megan knew what that meant. He was taking her to her death.
* * *
As if he had a noose tied around his neck again, Gage couldn’t breathe. There was too heavy a pressure on his chest, too much panic.
His gun drawn, he started forward, but a strong arm caught him and hauled him into a room down the hall from where the gunman had caught Megan outside Penny’s office. Gage knew several ways that he could have broken that arm and the man to whom it belonged. But he knew it was Woodrow. So he didn’t fight him.
“Shh,” Woodrow cautioned him.
Needlessly. Gage knew how to be quiet. His life had depended on it. Now Megan’s life depended on it. If the gunman realized he wasn’t alone, he would kill her. Immediately. Before they had a chance to rescue her.
Gage shouldn’t have left her. He should have known that she wouldn’t hide. She wouldn’t protect herself, not when she was so worried about her father.
Probably about Richard as well.
And knowing her, Penny and Nikki, too.
“We can’t let him get her upstairs,” Penny said, her voice soft but cracking with panic. “That woman will kill her for certain.” She hadn’t wanted to leave the chapel where her daughter was being held. But she’d been concerned about Megan. And Woodrow had insisted that they all stick together. There was safety in numbers.
Gage only needed the guy to get a little closer to him. Then he would act. He would do what he’d learned in the Marines—what had saved his life.
Megan struggled with the guy, fighting against the hand gripping her arm. The guy was big and he had to be hurting her. But she betrayed no pain. Only fear, her dark eyes wide with it. She knew, too, that if he delivered her to Andrea, she wouldn’t live long.
Until that day Megan had broken his heart, Gage had had no idea how feisty she could be. She’d always been so sweet and loving with him. Then she had told him that she’d never loved him at all. And she must not have, otherwise, how could she have believed he’d only been using her? Why had she listened to that resentful Tucker? Why had she believed the petulant young agent over Gage?
Of course he had realized today that she hadn’t known him any better than he’d known her. He had never guessed the depths of her strength. He saw it now as she continued to struggle with the man.
When the guy raised his hand to strike her, Gage started forward, but Woodrow held him back again. How could he let his own daughter get hurt?
Megan cringed in anticipation of the blow, but it didn’t come.
The man tensed. Then Gage heard what Woodrow had heard—the crackle of static. As the guy reached for the walkie-talkie in his pocket, Megan pulled from his grasp and ran.
She was definitely stronger than he’d known. Was she fast enough to get to the secret passageway?
Gage moved to step into the hall again, but Woodrow held on to him, motioning for him to be quiet as a female voice emanated from the walkie-talkie.
“Ralph, did you get her?”
“Yeah, Andrea, yeah, I did,” he quickly replied. He obviously feared the woman.
So did Gage. He’d already seen the hatred in her cold eyes.
“Then why haven’t you brought her up here yet?” she demanded.
“I’ll—uh—be up in a little while,” he nervously stammered. “I’m—uh—just having a problem with the wedding planner.” The problem obviously being that he had no idea where she was.
Fortunately, he was completely unaware that she was only a few steps away from him.
“Don’t waste your time with her,” Andrea replied. “The bride’s the one we want.”
And there was something ominous in her tone, something that insinuated she didn’t just want Megan for revenge for the stabbing.
Megan was the ke
y to whatever the hell their plan was.
* * *
Derek snapped the walkie-talkie out of Andrea’s hand like he had snapped her gun out of the bride’s hand. He couldn’t believe Andrea had lost her weapon, that she had been overpowered.
Andrea flinched and glared at him.
Where was the love she’d professed when she had visited him regularly at the prison? He wasn’t certain he could trust her now.
But she had helped him escape, and she had planned how to crash the wedding. She was the reason the plan had gone awry, though. She never should have forced her way into the bride’s dressing room. Maybe the bride had been about to back out of getting married. There could have been another way to convince her than threatening her with a gun, one she’d lost in a struggle anyway. Then once Derek had freed her, Andrea had rushed into the chapel and fired his gun, the one without the silencer.
He pressed the button on the walkie-talkie for the man in charge of the reinforcements posted outside. Once the guy answered, he asked, “Do you see any sign of police?”
Someone must have reported the shot. The police would have to send at least one car to investigate. So he didn’t have much time now, not if he wanted to avoid going back to prison.
“Not police,” the guy replied, “but the landscaping crew showed up.”
“Landscaping crew?”
“Yeah,” the guy replied with a mixture of confusion and amusement, “a bunch of guys that all look alike. Gotta be a family business.”
“Did you turn them away?”
“Yeah, I told them the wedding couldn’t be disrupted.” Not any more than it had already been.
Derek had thought about pulling a guy off perimeter duty to help him inside the church. But he had an uneasy feeling about the landscaping crew. If the wedding planner was as legendary as the blond guy had mentioned, why would she have scheduled a crew, with mowers and Weed eaters that could have disrupted the service, during a wedding?
She wouldn’t have. That damn sure hadn’t been a landscaping crew that had showed up.