by Lisa Childs
“Megan?” Penny adamantly shook her head. “No.”
“Then what’s the issue?” He could tell there was one.
Penny replied, “She thinks Gage is dead.”
Nick had been so busy, he couldn’t remember if he’d mentioned Gage’s survival to his boss and Gage’s former boss. Maybe he hadn’t. Gage hadn’t exactly left the Bureau on the best of terms—not after he’d acted like a hothead. “She hasn’t heard he’s alive?”
Penny shook her head. “I don’t think she would be getting married if she knew.”
“She would,” a gruff voice said as Gage joined them.
Penny jumped and pressed her hand against her heart. “You keep sneaking up on me.” And she obviously wasn’t used to that.
Gage had gotten good at that, at the silent approach. He hadn’t gotten good at hiding his emotions, though. Bitterness emanated from him. “Megan Lynch and I were done a long time ago.”
Even if Penny wasn’t almost clairvoyant, she couldn’t have missed his pain. It was palpable. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interfere.”
Of course she did. It was what she always did. But Gage didn’t know that. He didn’t know Penny.
She stood up as if getting ready to give up her chair to Gage. Nick wasn’t certain his old friend would want to sit next to him, though. Or if he even considered him a friend any longer.
Gage caught Penny’s arm. “Don’t leave,” he told her. “I need your help.”
“My help?” Her face brightened with hope. “With Megan?”
He snorted. “Hell, no.”
Penny cocked her head. “Then what?”
“I need you to plan another wedding,” Gage said, “for him and my sister.” He nearly shoved his finger into Nick’s chest. “Nick and Annalise are going to get married as soon as possible.”
Nick should have been horrified, or at least afraid. But he felt none of that. He felt like he did when he made love with Annalise.
Like it was right.
Like it was home...
* * *
“Nick and Annalise are going to get married as soon as possible.” The words hung in the suddenly silent waiting room. Annalise wished she could grab them from the air and shove them back in her big brother’s big mouth.
She had pulled off the baby monitor and dressed as quickly as she could because she’d been afraid of what Gage would do. She’d worried he might have already hurt Nick and that he’d gone back to hurt him some more.
She hadn’t realized he was going to embarrass the hell out of her. Her face heated with embarrassment as everyone stared at her. Were they waiting to see if she would agree?
Maybe they thought it was her idea, that she’d gotten pregnant to trap Nick. She’d worried that was what he would think. That was partially why she hadn’t told him when she’d found out she was pregnant a few months ago. She’d worried that he would think she’d done it on purpose.
The other reason she hadn’t told him was that when she’d found out three months had already passed—in which he hadn’t contacted her. No phone call. No email. No text. It was as if he’d forgotten about her completely, while he had never left her mind. Or her heart.
But as much as she loved him—or maybe because she loved him so much—Annalise didn’t want to marry Nick because he’d been pushed to the altar at the end of a shotgun.
She forced herself to laugh, but it rang hollowly in the crowded but weirdly silent room. “Don’t be ridiculous, Gage.”
He turned back to her as if he was surprised she would protest. But then, after all the years he’d watched her chase Nick, he had to be surprised that she wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to catch him.
Annalise knew that even though she’d caught Nick, she couldn’t hold him. He would run away again. At the moment, she wanted to run first. Her overreaction to the Braxton Hicks contractions had been embarrassing enough, but Gage had mortified her.
“I’m being realistic,” Gage said. “You two need to get married.”
“Why?” she asked. “This is the twenty-first century. It’s almost more common to be a single parent than to be a co-parent.”
Nick hadn’t had a father. After his father had died, his brothers and sister hadn’t had one, either. Penny Payne had managed on her own; Annalise could, too.
As if disgusted with her denseness, Gage shook his head and turned back to Nick. “Tell her you’re going to marry her.”
Nick’s face flushed now. He was apparently as embarrassed as she was. “Gage...”
“Do you want my nephew to be a bastard like you are?” Gage asked.
Annalise’s gasp escaped into the silence left after Gage’s obnoxious remark. Nick gasped, too. And now the color drained from his handsome face, leaving him pale and shaken. But he wasn’t offended. He was in awe.
“Nephew?” he repeated. Then he turned toward her. His blue eyes intense and curiously bright, he asked, “Are we having a son?”
She couldn’t speak. Too much emotion welled up, choking her. She could only nod.
Then one emotion overpowered her others: anger. She struck out at her brother, pushing him back. Gage, who was usually so solid and immovable, stumbled away from her. “The only bastard here,” she told him, “is you! How dare you call my son that.”
Or the man whom she loved.
As he finally came to his senses, Gage shook his head with regret and murmured, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Penny Payne was the one who admonished him in that maternally disapproving way that made every child, no matter how old, squirm.
“He’s right,” Nick defended his oldest friend. He was still staring at Annalise with that strange look of hope and awe and shock.
From the fresh bruise on his jaw, she could tell he’d fought with Gage. Had he struck his head, as well? Did he have a concussion that had addled his brain? Because he couldn’t seriously be proposing what she thought he was proposing.
To her.
Confirming it, he uttered the phrase she’d longed for most of her life to hear him say. “We should get married.”
Nick didn’t love her. And because he didn’t love her, there was no way Annalise could marry him. But she was too overwhelmed to speak again.
Everyone else was talking, offering congratulations and suggesting plans, as if her wedding was a foregone conclusion. She could only stand on the sidelines, watching the action of her own life, and shake her head.
No matter how much she wanted it—how much she’d always wanted it—there was no way she would ever be Nicholas Rus’s bride.
* * *
Guns weren’t allowed in the hospital—which was probably lucky for Nick. Cooper didn’t believe Gage would have actually shot his friend and former idol. But he suspected he would have threatened him with it.
Threatened him in order to get Nick to marry his sister...
Not that Nick had put up much of a fight.
Annalise was the one who looked as if she wanted to fight. But no words of protest emanated from her mouth, either. She was probably exhausted. And so was Nick.
Payne Protection needed to get them safely back to the security of Milek’s condo. Still talking about a wedding, the group moved through the hospital lobby.
Cooper’s marriage had started as one of convenience. Because the real groom had disappeared, Cooper had stepped into his place. He hadn’t given up that role—he was still Tanya’s husband—because he was the one she’d really wanted to marry.
Did Annalise want to marry Nick? Sure, she carried his baby, but that didn’t mean she loved him. The way she’d defended him to her own brother showed that she did.
But sometimes love wasn’t enough.
&nbs
p; His own parents had proved that to Cooper. Even as much as they had loved each other, his father had still betrayed his mother. He’d broken their vows.
So would it matter if Nick and Annalise married?
Cooper doubted either of them would get the chance, not with someone determined to take them out.
Gage wasn’t the only one who posed a threat to Nick. Someone had shot at him. If the bullet had gone six inches or so lower and to the left, it could have killed him.
Nobody could get into the hospital with a weapon. So they were waiting outside. Since it was night yet, the glass doors of the lobby just reflected back the interior. Cooper couldn’t see them.
But he knew they were out there—just as he’d known when insurgents were lying in wait for the convoy. He hadn’t been wrong in Afghanistan, and he wasn’t wrong now.
The minute Nick and Annalise—with Penny and Gage—stepped outside, gunfire erupted. The glass in the lobby doors shattered and sprayed inward, across the terrazzo floor and Cooper’s face. He’d known they were out there, but he still hadn’t been prepared.
Neither had Nick.
Chapter 13
Nick’s head buzzed with the rapid retort of gunfire. Cooper had warned him, had shared his suspicion that someone might stage another attack outside the hospital. He hadn’t needed the warning. His instincts had told him the same thing.
They could have tried to sneak out another way. Before they’d left the waiting room, they had studied the alternative exits. But walking into the parking garage or the back alley would have been more dangerous. They could have been trapped. The lobby entrance was along a four-lane street with plenty of room for escape.
The only trick was not to get hit. Ducking low and using his body as a shield to protect Annalise, as Gage used his as a shield to protect Penny, they ushered the women into the open door of the Payne Protection vehicle parked directly outside the lobby doors.
The vehicle—this one with bulletproof glass and metal—withstood the onslaught of bullets.
“Hurry up,” Garek ordered from the driver’s seat. But he didn’t wait for Gage to pull the door closed behind them before he careened away from the curb and into the street. Gage struggled but managed to slam the door closed.
Outside the darkened glass, Nick watched the flashes of gunfire. How many shooters had lain in wait for them?
There had to be more than the one man who’d escaped him in the parking garage and the second man who’d escaped him in his ransacked house.
With all that gunfire, there were definitely more than two shooters. More than two people after him and Annalise. The threat kept increasing. Why?
Who the hell wanted him dead that badly?
Even though the doors were closed, and the distance between them and the shooters grew as Garek sped away from the hospital, Nick kept his arms wrapped protectively around Annalise. His head was even still bowed over hers, her face in his chest.
She trembled against him.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
He felt her move but couldn’t tell if she nodded or shook her head. He eased back slightly. She peered up at him, her green eyes wide with fear and her face pale. But she nodded and assured him, “I’m okay.”
He leaned across Annalise to ask Penny. “Are you okay?”
She smiled and, reaching across Annalise, patted his hand and said, “Of course I am.”
They hadn’t wanted to put her in danger. But she already was, as much as she looked like her daughter. If she’d gone out another door alone, a gunman might have mistaken her for Nikki and shot her.
Gage seemed okay. He was trying to twist his long body to ease over the console and into the passenger seat. But Garek turned the vehicle, and Gage struck his head on the roof and cursed.
He might have a concussion, but he wasn’t shot. So he was safer in the SUV than he would have been in the lobby with the others.
Annalise turned around and peered toward the hospital disappearing in the distance. “Is everyone else okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” Garek replied from the front seat as he tapped his radio earpiece. “Nobody got hit.” He made a sharp turn, and Gage, settling into the passenger seat, hit his head on the bulletproof side window.
He cursed again.
“Drive it like you stole it,” Garek remarked.
Instead of getting mad, Gage chuckled and said, “You’ll need to teach me how.”
Unlike some of the kids in their neighborhood, Nick and Gage had avoided joining gangs. But Nick hadn’t resisted because he hadn’t wanted to steal cars. He had resisted because the gangs around them had mostly sold drugs. And he hadn’t been about to support his mother’s addiction.
“Pay attention,” Garek advised his passenger. “I’ll show you how to make sure nobody’s tailing us.”
Garek’s lesson took a while because he wanted to make extra certain that none of the gunmen had followed them from the hospital. He wanted to protect not just Penny, whom they all adored, but Nick and Annalise, as well.
Before he moved to River City, Nick would never have believed he would become friends with an ex-convict like Garek Kozminski. A man who’d served time for manslaughter and was rumored to be as renowned a thief as his infamous father. But Nick wasn’t just friends with the man; he was family, too.
And when he married Annalise, she and Gage would also become family. Over Annalise’s blond head, he met Penny’s gaze and nodded.
He didn’t need to say it aloud for her to understand his intentions. She would plan his wedding. And knowing Penny, she would have Milek add Annalise and Gage to that family portrait, as well.
The only thing Nick had to worry about was keeping Annalise and himself alive for their wedding day.
* * *
Annalise couldn’t stop shaking, and it wasn’t just because the spring night was unseasonably cold. Heat blasted from the vents in the condo, but her skin and her blood wouldn’t warm. She had gotten so cold when those shots had been fired at the hospital, shattering the lobby doors and windows. It was a miracle no one had been hit.
She shivered.
“You need to get back in bed,” Nick said as he led her toward the master bedroom. His arms had been around her from the moment they’d started across the hospital lobby. But for once, his closeness hadn’t warmed her.
“It’s almost dawn,” she murmured as she noticed light beginning to filter through the skylights in the living room. They passed through it quickly, though, into the darkness of the bedroom where there were no skylights. Not even a lamp had been left burning.
She shivered again as she imagined men hiding in the darkness, like they had hidden outside the hospital. She turned back toward the light of the living room.
But Nick propelled her gently toward the bed and pushed her down onto the edge of the mattress. “You need your rest,” he said. “You’re exhausted and probably in shock.”
As if she were a child, he undressed her, taking off her shoes and pulling down her pants. He left her in her shirt and panties, gently pushed her onto her back and covered her with blankets. The sheets were cold against her back, and she couldn’t stop shivering.
Concern furrowed Nick’s brow. “Maybe you should go back to the hospital.”
“No!” she sharply protested. She wished she had never gone, that she hadn’t overreacted to what nearly every other pregnant woman experienced. “I’m fine.”
Calling her out on the lie, he said, “You’re not fine.” But instead of insisting she go back to the hospital, he kicked off his shoes, took off his holster and weapon and crawled under the blankets with her. He wrapped his arms around her as he had in the hospital lobby. Tucking her head beneath his chin, he held her closely.
She felt his heart beating against hers. It was
pounding quickly. He hadn’t been unaffected by the gunfire, either. Only one person really had seemed unaffected.
“I’m not Penny Payne,” she said resentfully.
“What?”
“She was so calm,” Annalise remarked. “Like getting shot at was no big deal.”
Nick chuckled at her petulance. “She’s had more experience with that than you have.”
“She’s been shot at before?”
He nodded, his chin bumping against her head. “She has, just like every other member of her family. They’ve been through a lot together. That’s why she’s so strong.”
Annalise’s brief flash of resentment gave way to admiration and envy. Like the rest of her family, Nick obviously thought very highly of the woman. “I wish I could be like her.”
“You are like her,” Nick said.
Annalise laughed. “Now you’re just patronizing me.”
He eased her away from him and tipped up her chin. Light filtered in from the living room and fell across his handsome face, highlighting his every chiseled feature and the seriousness in his blue eyes. “I thought that the first time I met her.”
“What?”
“That she was like you.”
Annalise smiled. If only...
She wished she had that kind of strength, that kind of composure under pressure. “Why did you think that?”
“Because she is so friendly and warm,” he said. His mouth curved into a slight grimace. “And so affectionate. She radiates—” his grimace grew as he struggled to express himself “—like you radiate.”
“I radiate?” she asked. “What do I radiate?”
“Love.”
So he was aware that she loved him. Maybe that was why he had agreed to Gage’s crazy idea. Because he felt sorry for her.
“You’re so sweet and loving to everyone you meet,” Nick continued.
So maybe he didn’t take how she acted around him personally. Maybe he didn’t know how she really felt about him.
“That’s why it has to be my fault,” he said. “That’s why whoever has been terrorizing you with the break-ins and thefts must be doing it because of me.”