Explosive Engagement

by Lisa Childs

  And her soft curves cushioned his fall. She always acted so strong that he had expected her to be hard and cold. But she was soft and warm. She was also smaller than her big personality and more fragile than her tough attitude.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as the shots continued to ring out, knocking leaves and twigs from the trees so they rained down on them like debris during a hurricane. For some reason he felt as though he were in the middle of a storm and not just of gunfire but of emotion.

  Had his mother really suggested what he’d thought he heard? No. He must have misconstrued her words. Not even she was a big enough matchmaker to consider a marriage between him and Stacy Kozminski at all possible.

  Stacy stared up at him through gray eyes wide with shock but hopefully not pain.

  “Were you hit?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

  Eyes still wide, she finally moved as she shook her head.

  “Mom?” he called out. “Mom?”

  “I—I’m okay,” she replied, but her voice cracked with fear. As usual, it wasn’t for herself as she anxiously asked, “Are you and Stacy okay?”

  “Yeah…” He shifted, moving to roll off Stacy and return fire now that he knew she and his mother were safe. But Stacy gripped his shoulder, and he flinched in pain.

  “You’ve been shot,” she said, her voice breaking with urgency and concern. For him?

  He shrugged his shoulders, but there was a twinge of pain. Maybe more than a twinge. He grimaced and lied, “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding,” she said. Her palm smeared with his blood, she lifted it toward his face as if presenting him with evidence.

  He didn’t need to see it; he could feel it, sticking his sleeve to his skin. He glanced down then and noted the tear in the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. Oh, Mom was going to be annoyed that he’d ruined another one…

  “Are—are you hurt?” his mother asked, and unconcerned about her own safety, she began to rise from behind the monument.

  “Stay down,” he warned her.

  “The shooting stopped,” she pointed out.

  But that didn’t mean that the shooter was gone. He could have just been biding his time until he got a clear shot. And if someone really wanted to hurt Logan, he or she could do that most effectively by hurting his mother.

  “Stay down,” he told her again. “Don’t move until we get backup.” Maybe he shouldn’t have convinced Parker and Nikki and Candace that he didn’t need their protection. Maybe he should have let them stay with him like they’d wanted. Knowing them, they might have ignored his wishes—like his mother usually did.

  Sirens wailed as police cars approached, lights flashing through the tree branches.

  Stacy stiffened beneath him. Apparently, she had inherited her family’s aversion to law enforcement. “Your backup has arrived.”

  To him, backup was his family and employees. But the police would do. He doubted they would apprehend the shooter, though. His mother was right; he was gone. He’d gotten away again.

  He rolled off Stacy and stood up. Then he extended his uninjured arm to her. She stared at his hand before putting hers into it. Her hand was small and delicate inside his but not so delicate that she didn’t have calluses.

  “Maybe there will be an ambulance, too,” she said.

  “I don’t need one.”

  “You were shot.”

  “You were shot?” his mother asked, her voice shrill with alarm as she rushed over to him.

  “I was just grazed,” he assured them. “There’s no bullet in me.” This time. But every attempt got a little closer, a little more successful. The shooter wasn’t going to stop until Logan was dead.

  *

  STACY WAS FURIOUS and for once her anger wasn’t directed at Logan Payne. Her heels clicking against the slate floor, she stomped across the crowded pub to the knotty pine-paneled back room where her family was drinking a farewell toast to her father.

  Or was their farewell to Logan? Was one of them the shooter? Did he realize that he’d hit him? Maybe he thought he’d killed him.

  He could have killed Mrs. Payne, too. Hell, with as wildly as he’d been firing, he could have killed her. If Logan had ducked faster, the bullet that had hit him might have struck her instead. His reflexes had slowed at the wrong time for him, but the right time for her.

  She shuddered but refused to give in to the fear that had paralyzed her at the cemetery. Anger was better; it made her stronger.

  “Stacy!” Milek greeted her with a hug, his eyes bright with the sheen of inebriation. He was the lightweight of the family and could only handle a drink or two.

  She slammed her palms into his chest, shoving him back with such force that he nearly fell over. But Garek, also standing at the bar, grabbed him and kept him upright.

  “What the hell!” he protested.

  “What the hell!” she yelled back at him. She didn’t care if she hurt their feelings now. She was so pissed over getting shot at that she actually understood Logan Payne intruding on her father’s funeral. “Which one of you idiots shot up the cemetery?”

  “What?” Garek asked.

  “I nearly got shot,” she said.

  “What! Are you okay?” Milek asked, grabbing for her again.

  She jerked back. “I’m fine.”

  “It must have been Logan Payne,” Milek murmured. “He must have shot at you…” A look passed between him and his brother—a look of rage and revenge.

  “No,” she said, in response to that look as much as her brother’s statement. “Logan Payne is the one who got shot!” As if they didn’t already know that…

  “What’s going on?” Aunt Marta asked. “This is inappropriate talk for a funeral…” She sniffed her disdain of her husband’s niece and nephews. She had never approved of them because they were a convict’s children. Her own husband was a criminal but since he had never been caught, he wasn’t as unseemly as his brother and his offspring—mostly because of the lavish lifestyle his actions afforded her.

  “Is Payne dead?” Milek asked.

  Stacy’s stomach pitched as she remembered the blood on his tuxedo. She shook her head. “No.”

  His mother had forced him to go to the hospital to make certain that the bullet had only grazed him as he’d claimed. Mrs. Payne had wanted Stacy to ride along—probably so that she could propose marriage between Stacy and her son again. Even if she talked Stacy into her outrageous plan, there was no way in hell that Logan would ever agree to become her husband—even if it were only pretend.

  “That’s too bad,” Milek murmured with regret that Logan lived.

  Had Milek been the shooter? Was that why he was drinking so heavily? Or was drinking his way of mourning their father?

  Stacy wanted to mourn their father, too, but she’d hardly had the chance between Logan and the shooting. Before she could say anything else to her brothers, Aunt Marta grasped her arm and tugged her aside. Probably for another lecture on funereal etiquette.

  “Why are you so angry with your brothers?” she asked.

  Why was she so angry? Was it because if they were the shooters, they were risking prison again? Or was it because if they were the shooters, they were trying to kill Logan Payne?

  She shook her head. “I’m not…”

  “They are struggling with your father’s loss,” Aunt Marta said. “They didn’t get the chance to say goodbye that you got.”

  “They could have stayed behind at the cemetery.” She suspected at least one of them probably had…

  “At the prison,” Aunt Marta said. “The warden called you to see your father…”

  She almost wished she had been spared seeing him like that, but he had asked for her. He had wanted to talk to her. She shuddered now as she remembered seeing him as she had, in so much pain, his life slipping away from him…

  “What did he say to you?” her aunt asked.

  Stacy tilted her head in confusion, uncertain that she’d heard the older woman correctl
y. They had never been close—at her aunt’s choosing. She was hardly going to share any secrets with the woman now. “Why do you care?”

  “I’m just curious…”

  The woman was too self-absorbed to be curious about anyone but herself. She only wanted to know about things that might affect her. Why did she think Stacy’s father’s last words might concern her?

  Stacy had no intention of satisfying the woman’s morbid curiosity, so she turned away from her. But Aunt Marta grasped her arm in her talonlike fingers and asked again, “What did he say to you?”

  The woman was persistent, or as Uncle Iwan would admit when he had too much to drink, a nag. She wasn’t going to give up until Stacy gave her an answer. Any answer might do…

  So she shook her head. “I couldn’t understand him…”

  Aunt Marta expelled a little breath—as if she were relieved. Had her brother-in-law taken one of her secrets to his grave?

  Stacy had actually misled her aunt. She’d understood what her father had said, she just hadn’t understood why he’d said it. When he’d spoken them, Stacy had put no credence in her father’s last words. She’d blamed the strange statement on the painkillers they’d given him to make him comfortable because they hadn’t been able to do anything else to treat his injury.

  She still didn’t understand why he’d said what he had…

  “Son of a—!” Garek said as he turned toward the entrance to the pub’s back room.

  Logan Payne walked in as if he’d been invited. But Garek had been right to stop himself from finishing his curse. Mrs. Payne was the sweetest woman Stacy had ever met—the most forgiving and generous woman—and probably one of the smartest, as well.

  “I thought you got shot,” Milek drunkenly murmured. Had he thought that because of what Stacy had said or because he’d thought he’d hit him?

  Logan probably wondered the same thing, because his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He gestured toward the tear in the shoulder of the tuxedo he still wore. It was even more rumpled and smudged with dirt and blood now. “The bullet barely grazed me,” he replied. Then, with a sneer that was somehow both infuriating and sexy as hell, he added, “Somebody’s a lousy shot.”

  Garek chuckled. “Then it can’t be any one of us who’s shooting at you. We would have hit you by now.”

  Despite her brother’s bravado, neither he nor Milek were expert marksmen. They weren’t killers, either, even though they had actually killed before. And if Logan kept goading them, they might kill again—right here.

  Stacy had to do something to diffuse the potentially dangerous situation. It wouldn’t be just dangerous for Logan, who was outnumbered, it would be dangerous for her brothers, too, because if they hurt him—or worse—they would go back to prison.

  “Why the hell do you keep showing up where you’re not wanted?” Aunt Marta demanded to know. This time her disdain was for the intruder. She usually considered her brother-in-law’s children intruders, too, even though they were blood.

  “He’s wanted,” Stacy said suddenly. She’d realized what she had to do back at the cemetery, maybe even before the gunshots had rang out. But in this moment, she made the quick decision that she was actually going to go through with it. “I want him here…”

  Curving her lips into a big smile, she crossed the room to where he stood. His long body was tense. His face tight, he looked stunned, as if he’d been shot again—and that was just from what she’d said. She had no idea how he would react to what she was about to do. Maybe he would stop her before she could even act, like he had when she’d tried to slap him. But he just stood there when she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Why hadn’t he stopped her? Why hadn’t he caught her arms and pushed her away? He stared down at her, his blue eyes intense and watchful as he waited for her next move.

  Could she…?

  Bracing herself for what she had to do, she drew in a deep breath. Then she rose up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his hard-looking lips. But they weren’t hard. They were surprisingly pliant and sensual and fuller than they looked in the tight line of disapproval into which they were usually drawn.

  Now she was the one who was stunned—because he kissed her back. He clamped one arm, probably his uninjured one, around her back and pulled her tightly against him. Then he parted her lips and deepened the kiss.

  Noise erupted in the room. Gasps. Shouts. Even a scream. But she could barely hear them for the blood rushing through her head, roaring in her ears. Her pulse pounded madly with adrenaline and attraction. Had it been so long since she’d been kissed that any man could affect her like this? It couldn’t be just because it was Logan. She couldn’t want a man that she hated as much as this one.

  But no man had ever kissed her like he was kissing her—with so much passion and desire that her knees weakened and her head swam and she completely forgot why she’d kissed him in the first place.

  When he pulled back, she was panting for breath. Against her lips, he murmured, “What the hell are you up to?”

  For a moment she couldn’t remember. Then it came back to her—the plan, his mother’s outrageous plan.

  She whispered back, “I’m saving your life.” She turned toward her stunned family and announced, “Logan Payne is my fiancé. We’re getting married.”

  Chapter Four

  Logan’s heart pounded so hard that it was the only sound in the sudden silence that had fallen after Stacy’s insane announcement. He knew his mother had initially proposed this crazy engagement, but he hadn’t expected that Stacy would ever agree to it. She hated him.

  But he hadn’t tasted that hatred on her lips when she’d kissed him so convincingly that even he had forgotten it wasn’t real. He knew that she didn’t really want him; she just didn’t want her brothers going to prison for killing him. She was protecting Milek and Garek—not Logan.

  So then she couldn’t be behind the attempts on his life. Or maybe she had been, but his mother’s idea had convinced Stacy to change her plan for revenge to one for marriage. But then marrying him might be more vengeful than killing him.

  Not that he was going to fall in with his mother’s crazy plan. He wasn’t about to get coerced into marriage with a woman he couldn’t…

  Stand? More like resist. Why had he kissed her back? To punish her for the game she was playing? He’d like to think that but he had enjoyed it too damn much. Her mouth was so sweet and so damn sexy when it moved over his.

  “What the hell is going on?” one of her brothers, his face flushed either with alcohol or temper, demanded to know. “Just a couple of hours ago you were mad at him for crashing Dad’s funeral and now you’re engaged?”

  Her other brother’s eyes narrowed, he glared at Logan. “He must be threatening her.”

  “He saved my life at the cemetery,” she said. “He took a bullet for me.”

  He was pretty sure that bullet had been meant for him and that one of her brothers had fired it. And that was the only reason he was refraining from calling her on her lie. As her fake fiancé, he had access to her family—hopefully enough access to gather evidence. Like the damn gun they kept firing at him…

  She continued, “It was all very sudden.”

  “It’s all B.S.,” he whispered back at her.

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Hard. And he was surprised again that she had calluses on her small hands. What did she do for a living or for fun that had produced such calluses?

  They were engaged and yet he hardly knew Stacy Kozminski.

  “I’m surprised myself at the feelings I have for—” her throat moved, as if she were choking on his name or maybe just on her lie “—Logan.”

  Despite that kiss, he doubted her feelings had changed. She still hated him.

  One of her brothers—Garek—voiced his sentiment. “You hate his guts, Stace.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  “You’ve said over and over that you hate his guts,” Garek persiste
d. “Why are you lying about it now? What’s he got on you?”

  What did he think Logan could have on her? Proof that she and her brothers were responsible for the shootings? He hoped like hell he had it, then he could call her on her lie and end this nonsense. Then he could call the police…

  “My gratitude,” she said. “He saved my life.” She turned toward him and glanced up. Maybe her gaze was supposed to be adoring, but she just looked miserable. “He’s my hero.”

  Garek snorted. “And that just erases everything else he’s done to our father?”

  Her snotty aunt added, “To our family? You’re betraying your father. Your uncle. Your brothers…”

  Ignoring her aunt, she replied to her brother only, “I understand why he’s done what he has.”

  “I don’t understand what you think you’re doing,” Logan murmured. Her family was never going to buy that she’d had such a drastic change of heart over him.

  “If the situation was reversed,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “we would have done the same. Or more…”

  “He killed our father,” Milek said, his words slurred. He had definitely been drinking. “And you’re rewarding him for it.”

  “Logan did not kill Dad,” Stacy defended him. “Some gang member did.”

  “He wouldn’t have had the chance if your boyfriend—”

  “Fiancé,” she corrected her brother. “And stop. Just stop…all of it.” She turned toward Logan. “It’s been a long day. Please, take me home.”

  Did she mean his home? He wasn’t about to bring her there. She would probably set it on fire. And he had no idea where she lived. But instead of asking any questions in front of her resentful family, he escorted her out of the pub.

  “Have you been drinking with your brother?” he asked as he opened the passenger door for her.

  “I’m not drunk,” she said. Her gray eyes were clear as she glared at him.

  “Then why on earth—”

  “We can’t talk about it here,” she said. “There are cameras in the lot.”

  Her paranoia lifted his brows with surprise. “And you think your brothers would look at the footage?”