Married In Haste

by Dani Sinclair

  He liked the way she met things head-on. In fact, he was coming to like a lot of things about McKella Patterson. Her mind was as incredible as her body.

  “The ad said, Paul Dinsmore, call me. There’s something you need to know. Betty Jane.”

  She waited a moment. “That’s it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Make your point, Greg.”

  “The same ad was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer when I went there on business a few days later.”

  That seemed to surprise her as much as it had him. “Did you call this Betty Jane?” she asked.

  “Nope. No number. Besides, what would I have said? It just made me curious. Then a few weeks later, there was a new ad. Paul Dinsmore, I have something of yours. Call Betty Jane. I wasn’t traveling that week, so just for the hell of it, I went to the library and looked up a couple of other big-city papers with large circulations. Sure enough, the ad was in them. Someone was spending an awful lot of money trying to find Paul Dinsmore.”

  McKella held completely still. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

  “And you spent a lot of time looking into this. Why? Who is Paul to you?”

  He shrugged, hoping the darkness hid how uncomfortable that question made him. “Just a guy I once knew. You have to understand something about me. I like puzzles—and this one grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go.”

  The classic understatement didn’t speak to his sleepless nights or the gnawing in his gut that had started when he’d read that first ad. He’d had to know what threat lay behind Betty Jane’s messages.

  “That probably would have been the end of it if I hadn’t stumbled across a similar message on the Internet.”

  “The Internet.”

  She could sure pack a lot of emotion into that flat tone.

  “Yeah, you know, computers and—”

  “I know what the Internet is.”

  There was no missing her haughty tone. This was a woman used to command, not a bit hesitant about putting people in their places.

  Too bad she couldn’t put him in the one place he wanted to be.

  “Fine. I tracked Betty Jane to Lexington where she was a highly successful computer programmer.” His next words were going to cause her pain, but better a little pain now, than another murder victim later on. “She was married to Paul Dinsmore. The mother of his two-month-old baby daughter.”

  “No.”

  All the air seemed to deflate from McKella’s lungs. Greg reached out and grabbed for her, but she rallied immediately, pulling back, eyes glinting in the dark.

  “Obviously, it was a different Paul Dinsmore.”

  Greg shook his head. “She showed me their wedding pictures when we met. You saw it today.”

  Her features tightened in obvious pain. “They aren’t divorced?” she asked.

  “No.” She flinched, and he wished he could have lied. “I talked with Betty Jane on the basis of being an old acquaintance of Paul’s. She was desperate to find him—kept telling me what a kind, considerate man he was. A wonderful husband, even if he did walk out one day—taking their joint savings.”

  McKella crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Did he know about his child?”

  “I don’t know.” But he could make a guess. So could she.

  “What’s going to happen to the baby now?”

  He wasn’t a bit surprised by where her concern immediately went. “Betty Jane told me she had several sisters. I’m sure the baby will be taken care of.”

  McKella looked relieved. “But you didn’t tell the police about any of this back at the cottage.”

  “No. I didn’t.” There were a lot of things he hadn’t told the police—or McKella for that matter.

  “Why not?”

  “Would you, in my place? I don’t know what’s going on here, McKella—”

  “So why are you here, Greg?” she interrupted. “And don’t tell me you just happened to pick this island to vacation on at the same time as Paul and Betty Jane.”

  He shook his head, knowing how she was going to take his next words. “I won’t. When Betty Jane showed up in Louisville, I followed her. She led me to your reception.”

  “So you were there!”

  “Yeah, I thought you noticed me. I overheard some people say the two of you were honeymooning in Bermuda, so I caught a plane last night. Betty Jane must have flown over this morning.”

  He didn’t add that Betty Jane probably wasn’t the only one who had followed the honeymooners to Bermuda.

  “Why?”

  If she stood any more rigidly, a stiff breeze would blow her into the water. Greg released a sigh. Heck, his own motives were blurred now, but once he’d seen her husband and realized she was Henry’s daughter, he’d felt compelled to try and warn her. Or at least warn off her husband.

  “It’s complicated, McKella.”

  There was a long moment of silence. McKella raised her chin.

  “Why?”

  This was dangerous territory. He gave a mental shake of his head. It was already too late to back away. Two women were dead because of her husband. He’d do whatever he had to in order to prevent McKella from being victim number three. Including telling her at least some of the truth.

  “Betty Jane and I aren’t the only ones looking for Paul Dinsmore.”

  McKella waited expectantly as he stared out over the moody water. Had the hurricane moved closer? Was it even now approaching this quiet island paradise?

  “There’s a contract on Paul Dinsmore’s life,” he said quietly.

  McKella whispered something that the wind carried away. She turned to face the harbor, and for a moment he wondered if she was crying. He should have known better. She whipped her head around a second later to scowl at him.

  “A contract. As in gangsters and hit men.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Her voice was flat. Greg shrugged. “I shouldn’t have told you that, but I think you may be in danger. From Paul, certainly. From those who are looking for him—maybe.” Her expression remained stony, disbelief evident in the tautness of her body. “Someone attacked me in my room earlier tonight, McKella. Even the police think it was your husband. It occurred to me that you might be his next victim.”

  When he’d glimpsed her stepping from the cab in King’s Square today, he’d been about to head up the hill toward the cottages to wait for the two of them, grateful that he’d overheard the conversation at the wedding reception about where they were staying. Seeing her alone caught him unprepared. Curiosity, and his undeniable fascination with McKella, kept him from grasping a perfect opportunity to confront her husband in private.

  Instead, he’d followed McKella to the café, trying to decide whether to approach her. Once that truck had barreled out of nowhere, he’d been committed to his present course.

  How could he have done anything else?

  “Why would Paul hurt me?” she asked.

  “Maybe he wants your father’s company.”

  McKella shook her head. “My company,” she corrected flatly. “Dad put it in my name six months ago.”

  “All the more compelling. If you die, who’s your beneficiary?”

  Contempt studded her words. “Uncle Larry. I told you it’s a family business. Besides, your logic is flawed. The company is successful, but not worth killing over.”

  “Don’t bet your life on that. People will kill for pocket change. Does your husband know the company reverts to your uncle?”

  “I don’t know, but what does that have to do with the body in our cottage? Why would Paul kill Betty Jane and leave her in the bathtub?”

  “The spare tub,” he felt obligated to point out. “Let’s say Betty Jane threatened to reveal his past to you. They fight, and he kills her in the heat of anger. He didn’t mean to do it, but now he’s stuck with a body. He puts her in the spare bathroom until he can figure out what to do next. He doesn’t expect you to find her. Why wo
uld you have any reason to use that bathroom?”

  He didn’t add that her husband might not have expected McKella to live long enough to see the cottage, let alone the body in the tub.

  “Then where is Paul? Why wasn’t he waiting for me?”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t?”

  Her gaze traveled back out over the water, and he knew he’d scored a point. She didn’t know for sure if anyone had been inside the cottage when she first arrived. She told the police that she hadn’t looked around. Greg felt ill at the thought that he might have left her alone with a murderer.

  “If he was in the cottage when you got there, he must have heard you go into the guest room,” Greg pressed on. “He had to know you’d find the body. It makes sense that he would disappear to give himself time to come up with an alibi.”

  McKella shivered. Greg wished he had a jacket to offer her, or at least a shoulder for comfort. But he knew if he tried to touch her, she would pull away. She was a proud woman—bright, attractive and floundering in an environment she didn’t understand.

  “I’m going back to my room,” she announced abruptly.

  “McKella—”

  “Alone.”

  Stubborn and loyal, and both traits could get her killed. “I’ll walk you back.”

  “Unnecessary.”

  “I disagree.” Steel edged his voice.

  For a long minute, she measured him. Then she shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She didn’t glance at him as she made her way back up the wooden stairs toward the hotel. Greg didn’t say another word. She needed time to think through what he’d told her.

  He only hoped she’d have that time.

  MCKELLA ALLOWED GREG TO PRECEDE her to her room, only because she saw no way of stopping him. He checked the closet, the bathroom and even under the bed. She tried to be stoic. It wouldn’t do for him to see that part of her appreciated his concern.

  But his gentle touch as he turned to leave was almost her undoing. Breath caught in her throat when he stopped unexpectedly on his way out the door. He caressed her face with his palm.

  “Try to sleep. Put the chain on and don’t open the door to him, McKella.”

  She should have taken immediate umbrage. In retrospect, she did resent Greg’s assumption that he could tell her what to do. Yet, his obvious concern negated the arrogance of his words.

  McKella knew without looking through the peephole that Greg waited in the hall until he heard the night chain click into place.

  If only the scrambled pieces of her life would click into place so easily. She had married Paul only twenty-four hours ago with the full expectation that they would build a life together—that she would bear his children. But if she believed Greg, then Paul already had a wife—and a child. And someone wanted him dead.

  This was a nightmare. Paul wasn’t like that. He was a good, caring man. He’d proved that time and again since her father hired him.

  Would she have believed Greg if it hadn’t been for the call from Eric Henning?

  McKella shuddered. If any bit of this was true, Paul had managed to hide his true personality completely from everyone these past several months. Believing Greg meant she had made a mistake of gigantic proportions, that her marriage was a horrible lie.

  No!

  Paul had been so kind to her father. And he’d not only treated McKella with respect, but respected her intelligence. He’d sought her advice time and again, and listened when she spoke. They had similar goals and dreams. Paul was a good man!

  And wasn’t that the way Betty Jane had described her husband?

  McKella couldn’t stop the soft moan that passed her lips. She hugged herself, feeling horribly alone and vulnerable. Little things—small flaws she had recently started to notice in Paul’s actions, his jumpiness, his insistence she stay with her father in the days before the wedding—came to mind.

  Days when Eric Henning had tried desperately to reach her.

  She put in another call to the detective, but there was still no answer at the number he had given her. Uncle Larry wasn’t home, either. She left another message for him, then dialed her father. She wouldn’t tell him about Paul, of course. She just wanted the comfort of hearing his voice.

  Helen, the nurse-housekeeper, answered immediately. “Your dad’s asleep, McKella. Do you want me to wake him?”

  “No, don’t do that. Just tell him I called. Is everything all right?”

  “Oh my, yes. He seems so peaceful now that you’re happily married.”

  Happily married. If only the woman knew.

  “I don’t suppose you know where I can reach Uncle Larry?”

  “Why, no. He may have taken his plane down to his place in Florida. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no.” Just my life falling down around my head. “I wanted to touch base with him about something.”

  “Now, McKella, you’re on your honeymoon. You aren’t supposed to be thinking business. What’s wrong with that new husband of yours?”

  What indeed? McKella quickly ended the conversation. She couldn’t remember Nathan Marks’s home telephone number, so she dialed his office and left a message for him to call her in the morning. Legal advice could surely wait that long.

  When she tried to lose herself in sleep, fear was her companion in the king-size bed. McKella couldn’t do more than doze fitfully, her head whirling with the things Greg had told her and the nightmare events of the past two days. Where was Paul? Who was Greg Wyman? And who could she afford to trust?

  CONSTABLE FREER CAUGHT HER in the main dining room after breakfast the next morning.

  “You do not look rested, Mrs. Dinsmore.”

  “Yesterday was hardly conducive to a good night’s rest.”

  “Even after your evening stroll?”

  She blinked back surprise, as he sat down and waved the waitress away. If he knew about her meeting with Greg, did he also know what she and Greg had discussed?

  “Particularly after my evening stroll,” she told him.

  “Indeed? Do you still maintain you did not know Mr. Wyman before you arrived on Bermuda?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though he worked for your company four years ago?”

  So at least that much of Greg’s story had been true.

  “We discussed that last night when we realized the connection. I was in the hospital at that time. My father hired his company. Greg and I never actually met until yesterday.”

  “So it is just coincidence that you are both here now?”

  “What else could it be?” She was anxious to get away from the subject of Greg Wyman. Some cautious part of her didn’t want to repeat the things he had told her last night.

  The constable nodded. “What else indeed?”

  “Has there been any word on Paul yet?”

  “I am afraid not. How well do you know your husband, Mrs. Dinsmore?”

  The same discerning question from yet another source.

  “McKella, please.” She met his dark shrewd eyes. “To tell you the truth, I don’t feel like a Mrs. anyone at the moment.”

  But it suddenly occurred to her that this man might be able to help her resolve one issue. “Remember I told you I hired a private investigator to check into Paul’s background?”

  “Regarding his references, yes.”

  “Eric ran a routine background check, but he didn’t find anything wrong.” She hesitated before continuing. The officer watched her patiently, silently encouraging. “Eric left a strange message on my answering machine Friday afternoon. He said he had some new information.”

  “About your husband?” Freer seemed to come to attention without actually moving a muscle.

  “There is some question about who Paul worked for before he joined Patterson Opticals. I’ve been trying to reach Eric since the wedding, but he isn’t answering at the number he gave me. I’ve left several messages with his answering service, but he hasn’t called me back.”

  The polic
eman’s face remained inscrutable. “Why do you think that is?”

  She managed to control her tongue, if not her imagination. “I don’t know, but I’m worried.”

  “I see.” He studied her, letting the silence build. “Do you think your husband murdered the first Mrs. Dinsmore?” he asked quietly.

  Her stomach muscles twisted. “No—” she lifted her face to his “—but I don’t know what to think right now,” she added honestly.

  Quiet descended again, the sights and sounds of other breakfasters going unnoticed.

  “I will look into your Mr. Henning if you will give me his full name and telephone number.”

  McKella nodded and recited the number she now knew by heart. Freer made careful notes in a small black pad.

  “Good morning, McKella, Constable.”

  Greg Wyman suddenly stood beside their table. His usually vivid eyes were cloudy, attesting to a similar lack of sleep. The bruise on his cheek was pronounced, giving his rugged face a slightly battered aspect. But that did nothing to detract from his good looks, McKella thought. If anything, it only added to his roguish charm.

  His thick wavy hair was damp from his shower, and there was a tiny scratch on his strong jaw where his razor had nicked him. Dressed in a light-blue polo shirt and white cotton pants, he could have posed for a magazine cover—if the photographer air-brushed the lines of fatigue from his features.

  “Mr. Wyman. Join us,” the policeman invited.

  McKella forced herself to lean back silently, as Greg took the chair next to her. He managed to sit close enough that she could smell his wickedly appealing aftershave.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Greg asked the man.

  “Not when there is a murder and a disappearance to solve.”

  “How can we help?”

  She wanted to protest him coupling the two of them together, but Constable Freer responded before she could object.

  “Mrs. Dinsmore—McKella,” he corrected with a diffident inclination of his head in her direction, “was just telling me that you two did not meet four years ago when you worked for her father.”

  If Greg was surprised, he didn’t show it by so much as a flicker of an eyelash.

  “That’s right. It was quite a coincidence meeting on Bermuda like this.”