It was bad enough that he knew she would be at the wedding today, seated somewhere in the church. He didn’t want to fill his head with image and scent of her again right now. What he wanted was to get through the wedding ceremony and then leave.
Except he couldn’t.
Because he was now the fucking best man.
And he had to attend the reception and make a best man’s speech.
Would Daisy even acknowledge him, let alone speak to him, after the coldness he had shown toward her during the rest of their stay in New York? He couldn’t exactly blame her if she didn’t. A part of him would prefer that she didn’t.
The two of them had barely spoken to each other for the three days after she moved out of his hotel suite, and any conversation they did have was in regard to security rather than anything personal. Because there was nothing personal left for them to say.
There still wasn’t.
Nothing had changed in the past three weeks. He hadn’t changed. He couldn’t change. Who he was, what he was, was the fabric of the existence he had made for himself.
Nikolai Volkov.
The lone wolf.
Lone wolves didn’t ache for just the sight of one woman.
Lone wolves didn’t long to see her give him that mischievous and sexy smile.
They certainly didn’t physically ache to touch that woman again.
They didn’t feel lonely either…
Nikolai had always been alone, but he had never felt loneliness before. Before he watched Daisy walk away from him.
Now that loneliness consumed him, even when he was with other people, which was fucking ridiculous.
He cleared his throat before speaking. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for—for your help earlier this year.”
Lijah placed the back of his hand against Nikolai’s forehead. “Do you have a temperature—”
“Very funny.” He ducked away from that hand. “I believe… My manners were not… I should have thanked you at the time. I just… I don’t find it easy to accept…help, from others.”
“I would never have guessed that,” the other man came back with exaggerated dryness.
Nikolai scowled his irritation. “Look—”
“No, you look, Nikolai.” Lijah sobered. “What happened earlier this year? It’s what friends do for each other. What family does for each other. And whether you like it or not, you’re now a part of my family. My family of choice, because my real family is a waste of time and space.”
“I didn’t know that…” He knew very little about Lijah’s personal life. Hell, he knew very little about anyone’s personal life. Because he had deliberately chosen not to. Didn’t want to become involved, embroiled, in their private lives.
Look how well that was working for him today. He had agreed to be Lijah’s best man just because he didn’t want to let the other man down.
“No. Well. It’s not something I go around bragging about.” Lijah grimaced. “Most people only get to choose their friends, Nikolai. I got to choose my family too.” His grin returned. “You do know that the best man is expected to flirt with all the bridesmaids at the wedding reception?”
“All the bridesmaids?” Nikolai feigned horror, when inwardly he was feeling a little emotional. First the Markovics had chosen him to be part of their family, and now Lijah was doing the same. For a man who preferred to remain apart from emotional attachments, he seemed to be accumulating a lot of them. “How many bridesmaids are there?”
“Well, money is no object, and it’s Callie’s special day, so I told her to just go for it.” Lijah glanced in the mirror to make a last adjustment to his own cravat. “At the last count, I believe she’d chosen six of her closest friends.”
“Six?”
“She has a lot of friends.” The other man shrugged.
Nikolai wasn’t sure he had six friends in the whole world. He certainly didn’t have six close ones.
Or did he?
He had Gregori and Gaia. Dair and Kat. Now Lijah and Callie.
Seth and Jonas had also fallen into the habit of calling him every couple of days too since their return from New York. On the last occasion, they had also invited him to go out for a drink with the two of them. Nikolai had only gone because he had hoped to at least hear some news about Daisy. He had been disappointed. Neither man had so much as mentioned her. Nikolai hadn’t liked to introduce the subject either, in case they read more into his interest than there really was.
More into my interest than there really was?
He couldn’t be any hungrier for news of Daisy than he already was. Any news. Just hearing her name again would have been nice.
But no, Seth and Jonas hadn’t mentioned her, Lijah either, on the couple of occasions the two of them had met.
And Nikolai wanted to know whether or not she had gone ahead with her decision to leave Grayson Security. If so, where was she working now? Most of all, he wanted to know if she was happy.
If there’s a man in her life.
His hands shook as he realized she might bring another man with her to the wedding today. If she did, how was he going to react to that? Shit, she might even introduce the two of them.
How would Lijah and Callie feel if the best man at their wedding strangled one of their other guests?
“She didn’t accept for a plus one.”
Nikolai frowned as he dragged his thoughts back to the here and now. Back to what Lijah had just said. “What?”
“Daisy.” The other man gave him a pitying glance. “She isn’t bringing anyone with her to the wedding.”
His scowl returned with a vengeance. “I don’t—”
“You just gave a pained groan. I thought it might have something to do with seeing Daisy again today.” Lijah shrugged.
If he truly had groaned, then it was through imagining seeing Daisy with another man. Which Lijah had just assured him wasn’t going to happen.
Today, at least.
If Daisy had been at the wedding at all.
The two men arrived at the church in good time, and the first thing Nikolai did, after taking his place on the pew next to Lijah at the front of the church, was surreptitiously glance around for Daisy.
She wasn’t there.
The church was packed to bursting with fashionably dressed wedding guests. A lot of the women were wearing ridiculous hats, and the men all looked as uncomfortable in their formal suits as he felt.
But there was no Daisy.
Which was when Nikolai decided even seeing her here with another man would have been better than not seeing her at all.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Women came—if nothing else, he always ensured they did that!—and women went out of his bed and his life. Daisy was far from being the most beautiful of those women, or the most vivacious.
She was the gutsiest, though.
The sort of woman any man would be proud to have stand at his side during battle.
She was also a generous and satisfying lover.
He also knew her to be a loyal friend.
If that was true, then why wasn’t she here? Lijah was her friend, and this was his wedding day.
Had Daisy decided not to come to the wedding because she might have to see and talk to Nikolai? Did she despise him so much she couldn’t even bear to glance at him, let alone face the possibility of having to talk to him?
Was that him being arrogant, or had he really treated her so badly she was willing to let Lijah down in order to avoid seeing Nikolai again?
Yes.
“You’re groaning again.”
“What?” Nikolai turned in his seat to scowl at Lijah.
Dark blue eyes lit up with mischief. “You know, you were a hell of a lot more fun to be with when you still had that arrogant stick up your ass.”
Arrogant stick up his ass?
Was that how he appeared to other people? To Daisy? Lijah had called him a cold bastard earlier. Did Daisy think that of him to
o?
Of course she did, because that was how he had behaved toward her.
He sighed. “I still have that arrogant stick up my ass.”
“No, you don’t.” Lijah grinned. “You’ve mellowed out, my friend. Become practically human, in fact. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” He deliberately affected a Southern drawl.
Life was, indeed, a bitch.
And where the fuck is Daisy?
She—
“Thank God,” Lijah muttered as the wedding march began to play. “That’s our cue to stand up,” he added distractedly as he pulled Nikolai to his feet beside him, the two men turning to look at his bride as she walked down the aisle on Seth’s arm.
Which was when Nikolai saw that Daisy was one of the six bridesmaids Lijah had told him he was expected to flirt with at the wedding reception.
Accustomed to wearing denims or the formal suits she wore to work, Daisy felt extremely self-conscious walking down the aisle behind the bride in a silk figure-hugging, claret-colored, ankle-length bridesmaid dress. A dress that had needed to be taken in a full size since her fitting before her trip to New York, because she had lost weight.
What she now felt like in these unfamiliar and totally feminine clothes was the fairy on top of the Christmas tree.
If fairies on top of Christmas trees wore ankle-length dresses, with matching claret-colored rosebuds arranged in their softly spiked hair, and carried a posy of claret and white roses, that is.
Which they probably didn’t.
She was procrastinating, Daisy realized. Putting off the moment when she would have to see Nikolai standing beside Lijah at the altar.
What were the chances that Dair’s plane would be delayed and Nikolai would be asked to take his place as Lijah’s best man?
What were the chances that, as the maid of honor, she would now be sitting next to him at the reception?
A hundred to one? Thousand to one? A million to one?
Whatever those chances were, it had happened, and there wasn’t a damn thing Daisy could do about it.
Except smile and bear it.
Oh God…!
She’d finally risked a glance at Nikolai, her heart ceasing to beat and her breath catching in her throat as she took in how absolutely gorgeous he was in the formal morning suit. His shoulders were wide beneath the black fitted jacket, stomach flat against the gray waistcoat, his legs long and muscular in black trousers.
If Daisy hadn’t been so totally aware of what a scene it would cause, her legs would probably have collapsed beneath her.
His blond hair was still in need of a cut, eyes gleaming silver as he steadily returned her gaze, cheekbones sharply defined, his mouth—oh God, his unsmiling mouth was just as sculptured and sensual as she remembered it.
The same sculptured and sensual mouth that had once kissed her so passionately.
Everywhere.
Daisy felt a blush warm her cheeks at the memory of those intimacies. Intimacies, along with Nikolai himself, she had tried so hard not to remember or think about the past three weeks.
One glance at Nikolai and those memories came back like a flood. A naked and aroused Nikolai. The feel of his hands on her. His mouth on her. The unending pleasure.
She had been a “reasonably good fuck,” an “amusing diversion” to him, she reminded herself determinedly. A plaything. A toy to amuse him while they waited for Boris Petrov to make his move.
Daisy would do well to remember that as she navigated herself through the torture of being forced to see him, to be with him again today.
She was at least able to breathe again as Callie reached Lijah’s side and the two men turned back to face the altar as the marriage service began.
Only for her heart to falter when it came time for them all to walk down the aisle behind the new husband and wife, and she found herself walking at Nikolai’s side.
Neither of them spoke. The tension between them was palpable. At least it was to Daisy. The bland expression on Nikolai’s face as he stared straight ahead didn’t reveal what he was thinking or feeling. But then, when had it ever?
When he was in the throes of pleasure, came the immediate answer. When he climaxed. When he held her so comfortably in his arms afterward. The few precious occasions the two of them had laughed together.
There hadn’t been any laughter in his face that day he’d said those things about her to Gregori, she reminded herself firmly.
She had believed Nikolai was pushing her away on purpose that day because she had gotten too close to the real Nikolai. The fact that he hadn’t made any effort to see her again, even once, since they returned from New York was enough to tell her it was what Nikolai really felt and thought about her.
“You look very beautiful.”
“What?” Nikolai’s words were an intrusion into her thoughts as the two of them stepped outside into the sunshine.
Nikolai had decided that it would be too awkward for everyone if the two of them continued to ignore each other all day and evening, and if Daisy wasn’t about to break the silence between them, then he would have to do it. The frown of disbelief he could now see between Daisy’s eyes told him how welcome that effort had been.
“My comment was sincere,” Nikolai assured her. The fitted style and low neckline of her dress told him that she had lost weight these past weeks. Her hips were more slender, the bare tops of her breasts less full. Nikolai didn’t flatter himself those changes were because she was pining for him. “This is Lijah and Callie’s wedding,” he reminded softly.
She gave a pointed glance at the silk dress she was wearing. “Thanks for reminding me. I doubt I would have noticed otherwise!”
Nikolai’s mouth hardened. “I once read a quote that said ‘sarcasm is the defense of small minds.’”
She gave an incredulous laugh. “Are you saying I have a small mind?”
“No, of course not.” He scowled his impatience with what he considered to be a deliberate intention on her part to misunderstand him.
As a defensive response?
Nikolai was only too aware he had given up the right to second-guess Daisy’s moods or intentions when he hurt her with his words in New York. “You—”
“I thought I saw something, Nikolai.” Her hand moved out to rest on his forearm as her gaze roamed the wedding guests now milling about outside the church, congratulating the bride and groom and greeting friends and family members they probably hadn’t seen since the last family wedding or funeral. “Someone who shouldn’t be here,” she added distractedly. “Do you—” She didn’t get any further as there was a soft whining sound, and her body swung away and slightly round as a bloom of red appeared on her skin above the round neckline of her dress.
Blood.
Daisy’s blood.
The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion for Nikolai.
He saw the expression of shock—pain—in Daisy’s eyes.
The way her mouth had widened to form a surprised “oh”.
The instant paling of her face.
The glazing of those green eyes before her lashes fluttered closed and her knees crumpled as she fell toward the ground.
There were murmurs of surprise from the other wedding guests as Nikolai swept Daisy up in his arms, those murmurs turning to shouts and screams as they saw the sea of blood spreading across her chest.
Lijah rushed toward them, and Nikolai could see the other man’s mouth was moving—evidence that he was speaking?—but he couldn’t hear what Lijah was saying over the loud buzzing, the static, in his ears.
Daisy had been shot.
Was dying?
Or perhaps she was already dead?
She still felt warm in Nikolai’s arms, but he knew it took several minutes for the warmth to leave a dead body—
“No!” he wailed in protest at the idea. “Fucking no!”
He didn’t care about the shocked expression on the faces of the other wedding guests, and he shook off Lijah’s attempts to t
ake Daisy from his arms as he walked away.
His own knees gave way as he stepped onto the mown grass of the graveyard, sitting down abruptly, still cradling Daisy against his chest.
All the time praying and making promises to any deity that cared to listen to him.
Please let her still be alive, please let her still be alive, please let her still be alive…
Chapter 15
Oh God, the pain.
“Find whoever did this!”
Nikolai.
“Seth and Jonas are doing that right now.”
Lijah, and he sounded as grim as Nikolai.
“Daisy said she saw someone among the guests who shouldn’t be here. Find the bastard and bring him to me.”
Pain like I’ve never known before.
“Gregori has called an ambulance.”
Worse even than the ruptured appendix I had four years ago.
“No one is touching her but me!”
Is this what it feels like to die?
“You have to ease up, Nikolai.” Lijah’s voice was soothing, as if he were calming a wild animal. “Give her some room to breathe.”
Yes! Oh God, yes, please let me breathe.
“I need to see how badly she’s hurt, Nikolai.”
My chest hurts.
“Stay away from us, Lijah.”
God, how it hurts.
“I said don’t touch her!”
I can’t breathe.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Nikolai.”
I thought dying would be simpler than this.
“You can try.”
A brief pain, maybe, followed by a sea of calm.
“I need to see if she still has a pulse, Nikolai.”
A walk toward a bright and beautiful light.
“—take your fucking hands off me. I’m warning you—”
Blessed dark peace.
Nikolai needed to do something. He didn’t care what. Anything to stop him from thinking, from seeing the brightness of Daisy’s life’s blood as it glistened on her skin and soaked into her dress, his jacket, and then dampened the ground beneath them both.
No one could lose that much blood and survive.
“We found the shooter, Nikolai.”
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