Sentenced To Wed

by Adrianne Lee

  With this admission came a decrease in the pounding at her temples, as though the lead-packing peanuts in her head had evolved into feathers.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Bev said, “the bridal shop called. They need your decision about the wedding gown Bridget and I put on hold for you.”

  The slinky satin, off-the-shoulder, plain-Jane dress that Mark Everett’s hot golden gaze had made her feel downright sinful wearing. How could she marry Reese wearing a dress that would always remind her of Mark? How could she marry Reese if Mark were killed on the eve of her wedding?

  Should she be marrying Reese?

  She glanced again at the withering flowers he’d sent. One bunch. No more. Another man might have filled her sickroom with bouquets. Another man might have called day and night to check on her. As far as she knew, Reese had called three times in seven days, fewer times than her employer and co-workers.

  She ought to feel hurt. Or angry. Or something more than slighted. But she didn’t, and that made her wonder whether she had the kind of love for her fiancé that would sustain years of marriage. She squinted at her mother, who was fussing with her pillows, straightening her blankets. Her parents had enjoyed a long relationship, and they still seemed not merely content like some of her friends’s parents, but actually happy, as though one needed the other to feel complete.

  She had never felt “complete” with Reese. And that was all right with her. Being an extension of another person seemed like an old-fashioned way of looking at life. Of living life. Something from her parents’ era, their generation. She was of a whole new generation. This was a whole new century. It required a whole new mind-set.

  Didn’t it?

  Two weeks ago she’d have answered a resounding “Yes!” to that question. Two weeks ago she hadn’t met Mark Everett. Hadn’t felt the way he made her feel. Even now, as weak as a battered kitten, just thinking of him roused a honeyed ache deep in the core of her. She moaned, mortified that she lusted after a man who was not her future hus—

  Her future anything.

  He had no future.

  She should call off the wedding.

  The thought seemed to slough away another layer of the mysterious virus. Livia actually felt…hungry. “I’d like more of that soup, Mom.”

  Bev’s blue eyes brightened. “I’ll be right back with a fresh bowl and some saltines.”

  Livia sat up, allowing her mother to prop pillows at her back. I don’t want to marry Reese. Dear God. It was true…and it accounted for why she’d been dragging her feet with the wedding preparations and decisions. Why she hadn’t had every detail planned months ago. Then why had she accepted his ring? Agreed to become his wife? The answer seemed to have been there all the time, tucked into a corner of her mind, had she bothered to look. She was a levelheaded, plan-for-the-future woman. And Reese had stormed into her world like a white knight, offering her a life she could chart years in advance. He had security beyond her wildest hopes. He was handsome. He seemed to like children.

  But did he really? She considered his disregard for Josh and realized that lately she’d been seeing the tarnish on her knight’s shining armor. Maybe that was the trouble. Was Reese wearing armor of some sort?

  And what of Josh? Her feelings for the boy were not in doubt; he’d burrowed into her heart on their first meeting. There had been no resisting those huge hazel eyes, that sad little face. If she didn’t marry Reese, he would be hurt. But if she married Reese only to make Josh happy, they could all end up miserable.

  As her mother hustled from the room, Livia twisted her two-carat engagement ring, tugged it to her knuckle, considered pulling it off, warming to the idea of canceling the wedding. If she returned Reese’s ring, events would be altered. She wouldn’t be shot. If she wasn’t getting married, she wouldn’t need a wedding caterer. Could squelch this insane attraction to that walking dead man once and for all.

  The hourglass vibrated between her breasts. She grabbed hold of the chain and pulled it from beneath her sleep shirt. Her gaze landed on the demarcation lines. Eighteen days. A life sentence. For her? Or for Mark? No matter where she turned, or what she did, Livia could not run and hide from the fact that if she lived, he died. Shivers racked her. She buried her face in her hands, but couldn’t vanquish the unbidden image of that gorgeous man with a gaping, bleeding hole in his incredible chest. There had to be another way.

  There had to be.

  Shock ran the length of her. When had her instinct for self-preservation been diluted by concern for a man she didn’t even know? Or trust? A man Heaven expected to accept into its fold in eighteen days? How had she managed to let herself care as much about Mark Everett losing his life as she cared about losing her own?

  She shook her head, torment tightening her chest. Maybe the alternative she sought was not in how to prevent herself from getting shot but in how to keep them both from getting shot.

  The hourglass tingled again and her mind’s eye filled with the Processor’s face—stern with disapproval. His voice filled her head—thick with reprimand, warning her to leave well enough alone. To concentrate on saving her own skin. To attend to the job for which she’d been given this second chance.

  As much as Livia wanted to live out the sixty-odd years allotted her in the Processor’s computer, how could she stand by and allow someone to shoot Mark Everett? She’d been raised to respect human life. If she could save him as well as herself, she had to try.

  She inhaled with both nostrils, the air sliding through without interruption, the stuffiness amazingly gone. She stretched, ran her hands through her matted hair. Once she filled her belly, she would take a long hot shower, check her e-mail and head to the library to start what she should have started seven days ago: looking into Mark’s connection to Josh’s parents.

  The rattle of plates and silverware alerted her to her mother’s imminent arrival, and shifted her mind to her own parents, her own family and Reese’s family. Livia cringed. How in the world she would break the news to everyone that she was calling off the wedding they’d been working so hard to pull together for her.

  In the end she decided that bad news could wait a while longer. She had other, more pressing matters to tend to first. She ate, showered, dressed and read her e-mail, which consisted of a few “get well” wishes, forwarded jokes and cyber ads. Nothing from Chad. He and a couple of his computer-savvy pals were doing their own checking into Mark Everett’s background. If there was something to find, they would unearth it.

  Livia set out into the midmorning, wrapped in her hooded raincoat against a driving downpour. If she was going to find Mark’s connection to Josh’s parents, she needed to know more about Wendy Marshall’s murder and Ethan Marshall’s arrest and prosecution than what she could learn from newspaper accounts. But it was a place to start, would give her some basic information before she began to subtly question Reese and his family.

  Two years had passed since Josh’s father had been sent to prison for life. She hadn’t known Reese while his family had gone through this tragedy. Of course, she’d seen the media frenzy—couldn’t have escaped hearing about it if she’d wanted to—but she’d given the whole mess little attention. At the time, she’d just been dumped by Turk the Jerk and had been stupidly running short on pity for anyone but herself.

  She’d thought by getting engaged to Reese she’d finally gotten over falling for the wrong kind of man. Rain pounded the roof of her car like a sitcom audience stomping its feet and hooting over a hilarious joke. This joke was on her. She’d finally realized she didn’t love the one man who should be right for her, while being irresistibly attracted to a man sentenced to die in less than three weeks. “God, I’m as pathetic as this lousy day.”

  Strange though, even that realization couldn’t squelch her mood, and she laughed at herself, wondering if she laughed in lieu of crying.

  She merged with traffic on Front Street. “Concentrate, Livia. What do you know about the Marshalls?”

&nbs
p; What did she know? She’d been going with Reese for six months, been engaged to him for the past three, and yet, all she’d really gleaned from her fiancé was that he’d loved his sister and hated her husband. Under the circumstances, she could hardly blame him, but this was not the kind of information that would help her ferret out Mark Everett’s connection with the family. Trouble was, she had no idea what would help.

  But this was as good a starting point as any. She pulled into the library parking lot. She wanted to refresh her mind, review those newspaper accounts that she’d given short shrift two years ago. Hoping she wouldn’t have to drive to downtown Bellevue or Seattle to the offices of the local newspapers, she would try the library archives first. She edged the car into a narrow space.

  She shut off the engine and glanced through the sheet of pouring rain, spotted patrons running from vehicles to the building, and vice versa, beneath what little cover they received from umbrellas or newspapers or even books they’d borrowed. She wrapped her raincoat around her, pulled up the hood, and dashed inside.

  All available computers were engaged, but the young man manning the information desk told her the records she sought had yet to be put into the library’s computer files and were still on microfiche.

  AS HE WATCHED LIVIA from across the room, the young man at the information desk dialed a certain phone number. “You said to let you know if someone showed any interest in the Ethan and Wendy Marshall case. Is it still worth a thousand dollars to you?”

  “Depends on who is showing the interest.”

  “Livia Kingston.”

  Livia? Anxious fingers curled tighter around the handset. What was she doing digging into Wendy’s death?

  This definitely needed pursuing. “Thank you for letting me know. The thousand is yours.”

  Minutes later, the killer sat in the library lot, still trying to figure out how to discern what Livia wanted with information concerning Wendy’s murder, when a Cupid’s Catering van pulled into the next parking slot. The driver glanced toward his rearview mirror as he backed in, and a sudden flash of lightning illuminated his face.

  The killer felt struck through with the jagged bolt of electricity, seared to the heart, burned to the core.

  Golden eyes.

  Ethan Marshall’s eyes.

  The killer was the only one in the Rayburn inner circle who knew Ethan had been released from prison, but since he’d made no attempted to reclaim his son, had assumed Ethan was gone, skipped town to avoid persecution, or moved to another state.

  But now it was clear that he’d only changed his name and his exterior appearance. The damned newspapers hadn’t bothered getting a new photograph of him. The killer had assumed he looked the same. What a stupid mistake.

  And all this time, he was right under their noses, wheedling his way back into their social circles. There could be only one reason for that: he wanted to know why his bitch of a wife had had to die, wanted to know who had done the honors.

  The killer watched Mark Everett rush to meet Livia at her car and shuddered with fury. And fear. The loaded gun felt cold and heavy and deadly. It was time that pompous chef joined his dearly departed. And maybe Livia, too.

  MARK EVERETT would have given a thousand dollars to clear from his memory banks his last view of Livia Kingston’s tight little butt swishing down his stairs, to erase the threat of her last words. He’d spent the week jumping every time the phone rang, the doorbell. He had to know whether or not she’d told anyone what she knew. Had to find out what she knew.

  But according to her mother and sister, Livia was down with the flu. Had been down with the flu since the afternoon she’d run from his house. Seven excruciatingly cruel days and nights.

  But today she’d recovered and come here. Why the library? Something to do with the wedding? Or something else?

  His gut told him something else.

  He backed the van into a slot that gave him a direct view of the library entrance and shut off the engine. The tick of the cooling motor joined the heavy rain in making a jarring chorus of noise against his thoughts. He watched Livia hurry inside and kept his gaze glued to the door. Each minute seemed like an hour and he warred with himself against staying put or following her. As much as he wanted to speak with her, he dare not confront her in a public place. Not without knowing what she might say. Or do. Not with his control slipping as fast as the water streaming through the streets.

  He sighed and shoved his hands through his hair, glued his gaze to the library door and willed her to appear. Instead she appeared in his mind, the way she’d looked with her wet clothes hugging every ripe curve of her lean body, the way she’d felt squirming beneath him, those big aqua eyes drinking him in, hinting at a passion that begged for release, and the taste of her mouth, the blood-boiling sensation of her tongue stroking his. He moaned as a spontaneous flame lit in his belly.

  Damn it. It was bad enough that she distracted him, drove him to the edge and back of sexual frustration, but she was a danger to him in far worse ways. He had to prevent her from ruining everything, but how? If she was as thoroughly encamped on Reese’s side of this issue as she had to be, he was doomed. Josh was doomed.

  He slapped the steering wheel. No! Defeatism was for losers. He might once have been such a man, but not now. If you don’t control a situation, it controls you. For him to learn that lesson, his son had paid too dear a price. He would not bring more pain down on Josh.

  A flash of bright blue appeared in the library door. Mark straightened, tensed. Yes, it was her.

  Livia dashed into the rain and sprinted for her car. He left the van and raced toward her, rain pelting him. But she seemed oblivious to it. In fact, for someone who’d been laid up with the flu all week, she seemed full of spit and vinegar. He met her at her car just as she poked the key into the lock.

  She jerked back, her eyes going wide. Her face was pale, but even wet with rain, she was lovely. He resisted the urge to touch her cheek, to stroke it dry, resisted because of the fear he sensed in her tense stance. She was afraid. Of him. His ever-simmering anger boiled over. Damn it to hell. “We need to talk. Now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She turned and unlocked the car door. Wrenched it open, started to scramble inside, then squared her shoulders and glared up at him. “Are you going to tell me the truth…about who you are and…and…and why you have to cater my wedding?”

  “Yes.”

  She studied his face as though trying to discern whether he was lying. But he was being as honest as he knew how. While he’d waited for her to emerge from the library he’d realized the truth was his only hope. He had to level with her…for Josh’s sake. His gaze locked with hers and that crazy inexplicable connection he felt to her gripped him harder than either previous time. It wasn’t false. It wasn’t something he’d imagined. It was there. But he didn’t understand it.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, if you’ll tell me why I feel somehow connected to you. And don’t deny it, because I can see you feel the connection, too.”

  She blanched as if what she had to tell him was worse than what he had to tell her. Mark’s gut clenched, and he knew he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

  Chapter Eight

  SPILLED BEANS

  Take some:

  He said

  She said

  Heat to Boiling

  Watch Out for Flying Objects

  Things are not going according to plan. Livia felt the hourglass vibrate against her heart and amended the thought to “things were not going according to her plan.” She had figured she’d do some homework before confronting this man. Heaven and he seemed to have their own agendas.

  She blinked against the driving rain, peering out from under her protective hood. He’d startled her, made her afraid; she realized now that the fear wasn’t of him. But for him.

  “Okay, but if we’re going to talk it has to be somewhere private,” she said. What she had to tell him was definitely for his ea
rs only.

  “And dry.” He shook rain from his hair, shrugged it from his distressed leather jacket, but beaded droplets clung to his ebony lashes, giving him an irresistible vulnerability. “Warm even.”

  “Warm and dry.” She hugged herself, more for protection against that vanilla-scented charm of his than from the weather. “Where?”

  “My house?” He tilted his head as though gesturing in that general direction. “No one’s there at the moment…and won’t be for several hours.”

  She shivered at the thought of returning to the scene of their carnal encounter. She wasn’t sure she trusted herself alone with him. There. “Will it take several hours?”

  “That depends.” His tawny gaze was as unyielding as a lion’s stare. “On you.”

  On her? What did that mean? Was he going to level with her…or play sexual tag? No. That look wasn’t sensual…not in any way. Whatever was going on with him had nothing to do with what had happened between them last week. She was the one with the inappropriate thoughts. The one who couldn’t banish the image of his naked body, couldn’t kill the memory of his touch, his taste, his kiss. I don’t thrust myself on women who don’t want me. Trouble was, she did want him. Wanted him so much her blood was alive with the need.

  “Okay.” She tore her gaze from his. “I’ll meet you there.”

  As she drove to Cupid’s Catering, she wondered how she would tell Mark about their “connection.”

  What if she couldn’t find the right words?

  What if he didn’t believe her?

  What if he did?

  Livia’s breath came shuddering out. What if he couldn’t be saved from his fate, even if he knew that fate ahead of time?

  She parked behind the cream-and-teal van and sat staring out through the rain. Maybe she shouldn’t have acceded so quickly to meeting him here. Maybe she should go somewhere and read the pages in her purse, then come back. She reached for the keys, but realized she was too late. He was signaling from the porch. She gathered a bracing breath, and what courage she could find, and joined him.