BRIDAL JEOPARDY

by Rebecca York

  It didn’t seem likely because she hadn’t been a baby. Maybe she’d had some illness and her parents had taken her to a specialist?

  She wasn’t sure, and probably it wasn’t important. Or maybe it was. She was getting married. Would she have trouble getting pregnant?

  A shudder went through her. She wanted children. Maybe she could be close to her own children, the way she’d never been close to her parents. But did she want to have children with John Reynard?

  The idea sent another frisson through her. She’d felt trapped the moment she’d agreed to the marriage with Reynard, but meeting Craig Branson had made it worse. Unfortunately, she was drawn to him as she’d never been to her fiancé.

  She closed her eyes, willing those thoughts out of her mind. Thoughts of Reynard and of Branson. She had a more immediate problem. Men had come to her shop and threatened her, and she’d better talk to her father about it.

  She turned off her computer and looked out the window, seeing the men in the car across the street. They were supposed to be protecting her, but her impulse was to slip away without their knowing it. Because she didn’t trust John? Or because she didn’t like the idea of his having her followed? And she had the feeling that would only get worse if they married.

  Chapter Five

  Instead of walking out the front door, Stephanie slipped into the courtyard at the side of her house. From there, she went into the alley where her car was parked. Before she’d gotten two blocks from home, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw that she was being followed—by the men who had been sitting out front.

  How did they even know she’d left the house? Apparently there was some mechanism for spying on her that she didn’t know about and didn’t understand.

  As she drove to her father’s Garden District mansion, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror, checking the men behind her who were making no attempt to hide the fact that they were following. She drove around the block, partly to make the men wonder what she was doing and partly to have a look at the house. Once it had been painted in shades of cream, purple and green to create the classic “painted lady” effect that was so popular in the Garden District, with different colors used to accent different parts of the trim. But the paint had faded, making the house look sad instead of distinctive.

  And the shrubbery was overgrown, contributing to the general air of neglect. She hadn’t really looked at the exterior in ages, and it was a shock to see how much the property had gone downhill in the past few years.

  When she finally pulled into the driveway, the men stopped on the street in front of the house, watching her through the screen of shrubbery as she walked to the wide front porch. She knocked to let her father know that she was there, then used her key to let herself in.

  Once again, she stopped to notice details that she hadn’t paid much attention to in years because they were simply part of the environment. Now she looked around at the familiar furnishings, many of which had been handed down through several generations.

  The front hall boasted a long, antique marble-topped chest, centered under an elaborate gilded mirror. Both of them needed dusting. And in the sitting room to her right, she saw the old sofas and chairs that had been in the house since before she was born.

  “Dad?”

  “Out here,” he called.

  She walked through the kitchen that hadn’t been updated since the seventies and into the sunroom that spanned the back of the house. It had always been her favorite room, filled with blooming plants and wrought iron and wicker furniture. And she noted that her father must be keeping it up because the plants all looked healthy.

  He was in his favorite wicker chair, where he could look into the room or out at the formal garden. Although the plants in the sunroom were well tended, the back garden was more bedraggled than the front. When she was little, they’d had a crew come by several times a week. Now it was probably once a month, and the neglect showed. Really, she should come over here to trim some of the bushes.

  In her spare time, she thought. She was plenty busy with her shop and with the wedding preparations.

  She had given the house and garden a critical inspection. Now she did the same thing with her father, who was in his early seventies. Once he’d been a vigorous man. Now his broad shoulders were stooped, and his white hair was thinning on top. His complexion had always been ruddy. The color hadn’t faded, but the lines in his face were more prominent.

  He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, a blue-and-red-striped tie, a navy sports jacket and gray slacks as though he might be ready to receive company. The sartorial statement was a holdover from the old days. The world might have switched to casual dress, but her father had stayed with his traditions.

  He looked up to meet her gaze.

  “You were just here a couple of days ago. Now what?”

  It wasn’t a very warm welcome. No “Hello” or “How are you?” But she was used to that kind of reaction from him. She and her father had never had that great a relationship, and it had deteriorated after her mother had died five years ago of ovarian cancer. It had been a quick death because her mother had kept her symptoms to herself until it was too late to do anything about the cancer.

  When Stephanie had been a kid, Mom had tried to keep up the appearance of a warm, close family, and maybe she fooled some people who didn’t know them all that well. Dad had always done his own thing. He’d had a sales job that had taken him out of town frequently. Being away from his family had given him the opportunity to gamble. He’d retired several years ago, but since his wife’s death, there had been no one to pull him back from his gambling obsession. Which was how he’d gotten into debt and almost lost the house—until John Reynard had approached him about marrying his daughter.

  Dad had always been a pretty decent poker player. In fact, there were many times when he’d won instead of lost. In her more cynical moments, Stephanie wondered if John had somehow arranged for her father to lose—so he could approach him with the offer of financial salvation.

  “You know I like to stop by and see how you’re doing,” she answered.

  “I’m doing fine,” he said, his brittle voice a counterpoint to the claim.

  “That’s good.”

  “What’s bothering you?” he asked bluntly.

  She might have taken the time to work up to her question, but since he was forcing the issue, she asked, “Are you gambling again?”

  He sat up straighter in his chair when he answered, “I agreed not to.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” she said, determined to meet his words with equal force.

  “I’ve abided by my agreement. Is there some reason why you’re asking?”

  “Two men came to my shop and threatened me,” she said.

  “What men?”

  “They looked like they could be connected with the mob or something.”

  “They weren’t there on my account.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He glared at her. “Maybe you ought to think about what you might have done to attract their attention.”

  “I have.”

  He kept his gaze on her. “And you can’t think of anything?”

  “No.”

  “You always did keep your own secrets.”

  “I’m not keeping secrets,” she answered, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were a lie. She was keeping the secret of Craig Branson from her father. For several reasons. She knew he wouldn’t approve, and she also knew that he wouldn’t understand about what had happened between her and Branson. Nobody would understand.

  Still, she managed to say, “Do you think I’d come over here and ask if you might be the cause of the problem if I already knew what was going on?”

  He shrugged. “I never know what to think abou
t you. You were usually off in your own little world—where nobody could reach you. Good luck to John Reynard. He thinks he’s getting what he wants, but he’s in for a surprise.”

  She stared at her father, hardly able to believe his words. She’d sacrificed her future to save him, and he was acting as if he didn’t give a damn about her. Had his attitude toward her changed when she’d agreed to marry Reynard? Or had he seen a chance for her to do something useful for the family? And why had she agreed if this was the kind of thanks she got?

  “Did I do something particular to upset you?” she asked.

  “No.” The word was clipped and she wondered if he was lying.

  “All right,” she said, then turned on her heel and left, thinking that this visit had been a waste of time.

  Well, not entirely, she corrected herself. She was pretty sure that her father had nothing to do with the men who had threatened her. Which left her—where?

  She shivered. She was in danger, and she could let John’s men deal with the threat. Or...

  Another idea was forming in her head. Craig Branson had a detective agency. Didn’t that make him equipped to find out what was going on in her life that she didn’t know about?

  It was a logical conclusion, but she knew it was also a rationalization. She had pulled away from Branson because she’d been afraid, but now that she had some distance from him, she wanted to repeat the experience.

  Which meant she had another problem. John’s men were following her around. If she approached Craig Branson, they’d know it.

  * * *

  TOMMY LADREAU MOVED restlessly in his seat.

  “You gotta pee?” his partner, Marv Strickland, asked.

  “Yeah.” Tommy was thinking he’d ask Marv to make a quick stop in an alley when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number, then pressed the answer button.

  Marv looked at him questioningly.

  Reynard, Tommy mouthed

  “Report” was the crisp command from the other end of the line.

  It was the man who paid him a good salary to do a wide variety of jobs—from messenger duty to surveillance to murder. Murder got his adrenaline going. Sitting around in a car keeping track of Stephanie Swift was another matter. But he always carried out his assignments to the best of his ability. He’d known all along that he was working for a dangerous man. Then Arthur Polaski had washed out of the ground in the bayou country.

  It was well-known that he’d been an employee of John Reynard when he’d disappeared twenty years ago.

  Reynard had been upset about the man’s reappearance as a fleshless skeleton. He’d tried to keep the information quiet among the guys currently working for him, but the word had gotten around—eliciting quite a bit of speculation.

  Was it the boss who’d put Polaski in the ground? Or was it someone else? Nobody knew. Nobody was happy about the discovery. And everyone was wondering—why now?

  Tommy cleared his throat. “Ms. Swift left the house and went over to her father’s place.”

  “And?”

  “She stayed for about a half hour. Then she came back home, and she’s been there ever since.”

  “And you had no problem following her?”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay. Good. Stay on it. If anything unusual happens, I want to know about it immediately.” He hesitated for a moment. “And I want to know immediately if that guy shows up. Brady. The one she claimed rescued her at the dress shop.”

  “Will do.”

  Reynard clicked off, and Tommy looked at his partner. “You hear that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He didn’t like Brady sniffing around his honey the other night. Now he’s upset about the guy showing up again at the dress shop.”

  “Want to bet that Brady ends up dead?” Marv asked.

  Tommy shook his head. “I’m sure as Shinola not going to bet against it.”

  * * *

  STEPHANIE SAT in her car for a few moments, trying to calm down after her meeting with her father. It was hard to believe they were related to each other. Sometimes she had fantasies about being someone else’s child—and that was the reason she could never connect with him on any meaningful level.

  She switched her thoughts back to Craig Branson and felt a rush of emotions—only some of them pleasant.

  With a sigh, she climbed out of her car and headed for her back door. When she stepped inside, she gasped as she took in the shadowy figure sitting in the easy chair across from the door.

  Chapter Six

  Craig Branson watched Stephanie’s security detail take off. When the car was out of sight, he crossed to the alley in back of her house and found her car missing.

  They were tailing her, and either they had X-ray vision, or they had some other way to know which way she was going.

  He clenched his teeth. There was no way to find out about that for sure until she came back.

  Instead, he used his lock picks and went inside, then focused on the interior of the house, liking the mixture of antiques, comfortable chairs and sofas, and whimsical decorations.

  She must like animals, because she had a lot of little ceramic, glass, wood and metal figures on the shelves among her books. He picked up a cat that looked as if it came from Mexico, stroking his fingers over the smooth, painted surface, half hoping that he’d pick up some impression of the woman herself. But he got no mental connection to her by touching any of her things.

  He walked upstairs to her bedroom and stepped inside the room, loving the cool blue-and-white color scheme that reminded him of a beach cottage. His eyes zeroed in on the neatly made bed. Had John Reynard slept there with Stephanie? The thought of them naked in bed together made his throat close, and he fought to banish the image from his mind.

  He wanted to linger in the bedroom, but he knew that was an invasion of her privacy.

  A laugh bubbled inside him. An invasion of her privacy? Like getting into her mind? Well, that contact had invaded his privacy, too. A fair and equal invasion. He wouldn’t start off their relationship by looking through her underwear drawer.

  The word relationship stopped him. He was making assumptions. But he knew they were valid. They were going to mean something to each other. Really, they already did.

  Forcing himself to turn away from the bed, he went back to the living room and sat down in one of the easy chairs to wait for her return.

  Forty minutes later, he heard a car pull up outside. When he heard the lock click, his whole body tensed, and he focused like a laser on the door.

  Some part of him wondered if he had imagined the intimacy between them in the dress shop. The minute she stepped into the room, he could feel the air crackling between them. If she crossed to him...if he got up and crossed to her...

  He ordered himself to put away that thought.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded.

  “It was easy.”

  He saw her lick her lips and knew that her mouth must be as dry as his.

  The words she spoke weren’t the ones he wanted to hear. “Don’t touch me.”

  He felt his gaze sharpen. “Afraid?”

  “Yes. You should be, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because...” She lifted one shoulder, apparently unwilling to put a warning into words.

  He stayed where he was, but he knew that at any second he could change the rules between them by crossing the room to her, and there would be nothing she could do about it.

  He felt tension course through him as he asked, “Where were you?”

  “Like that’s any of your business,” she shot back.

  When he kept his gaze fixed on her, she answered, “Visiting my father.”

  “To ask if he was gambling again?�
��

  She answered with a small nod.

  “What did he say?”

  “He denied it.”

  “Which leaves you in an interesting position.”

  Probably she’d been considering the same thing. Instead of pursuing that line of thought, she said, “I don’t appreciate finding you in here. Is this how you operate as a detective?”

  “You’ve done some research on me?”

  “Yes. I suppose you know that John Reynard has men following me around.”

  “Yes. I came in here after they took off after you.”

  She looked toward the closed venetian blinds. “They’re outside now. How are you going to get out of here?”

  “I’ll worry about that when the time comes.” He cleared his throat. “Did they show up at your father’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you wonder how they knew where to pick you up?”

  She swallowed. “I thought they might have some idea where I was going.”

  When he stood, she tensed, obviously bracing for him to come to her and put his hands on her, which was what he’d longed to do since she walked into her house. But he was going to restrain himself, at least for now.

  “Maybe we’d better have a look at your car.”

  “My car?” she asked, obviously struggling to refocus.

  “Yeah.” He stood up and crossed to the door from where she’d just entered. Looking back over his shoulder, he said, “Are you coming?”

  Her face was grim as she followed him, staying a few paces back when he crossed the courtyard.

  At the alley, he paused and looked around. They seemed to be alone. Quickly he approached her vehicle, stooped down and felt along the edge of the bumper, then continued around the side of the car. When he found what he’d been looking for, he felt a mixture of satisfaction and annoyance.

  Turning, he held out a small plastic rectangle.

  She took an involuntary step closer. “What is it?”

  “A GPS tracking device.”

  Her breath caught.

  “They used that to follow you. That’s why they could sit out front and wait for you to drive somewhere.”