Читать книгу: «Groom Under Fire»
“Tanya, are you okay?” he asked again.
Her breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. She must have been holding it, and she murmured, “I think so …”
But he heard the doubt in her voice and eased up so she could roll over and face him. “Were you hit?” he asked. He ran his hands down her sides, checking for wounds. Just for wounds …
But he found soft curves and lean muscles instead. Heat tingled in his hands and in other parts of his body. A few minutes ago he’d thought she was going to kiss him. Their mouths had been only a breath apart, but maybe that was because he’d leaned down—because he’d wanted to kiss her so badly his gut had twisted.
The woman got to him as no one else ever had. And that made her dangerous—almost as dangerous as the shooter.
Groom Under Fire
Lisa Childs
Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
To my wonderful groom—Philip Tyson—thanks for an amazing first year of marriage. And to the woman who raised him to be the wonderful man he is, Shirley Tyson—thank you for being such a loving and supportive mother. You are a phenomenal woman, and I am so lucky to have you as a mother-in-law.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Extract
Prologue
Their petals dried and brittle and as black as tar, the roses arrived the day after the announcement was printed in the paper. There were a dozen of them in the box, the thorny stems twisted around each other like barbed wire.
Tanya Chesterfield’s finger bled from the one she had been foolish enough to touch. Crimson droplets fell onto the white envelope of the card that had come with the gift.
Her hand trembled as she fumbled to open the envelope. Maybe she should have just tossed it and the flowers into the trash. But she had to see if it was as threatening as the other notes she’d received anytime she had seriously dated anyone the past ten years.
She wasn’t just dating now, though. She was engaged. And it was that engagement announcement that she pulled from the envelope.
The picture of her and her intended groom had been desecrated with a big black X. But that wasn’t all the marker had scratched out on the announcement. The date of the wedding had been changed to date of: DEATH.
Chapter One
“You’re messing with me,” Cooper Payne accused his older brother. He hadn’t been gone so long that he’d forgotten how they all handled any emotional and uncomfortable situation—with humor and teasing.
“I’m giving you an assignment,” Logan said, but he was focused on the papers on his desk as if unwilling to meet Cooper’s stare. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
After his honorable discharge from the Marines, he had come home to River City, Michigan, in order to join the family business. The business his brother had started: private security protection. Not his mother’s business: weddings.
“I want a real assignment,” Cooper clarified as he paced the small confines of Logan’s dark-paneled office. “Not some trick our mother put you up to.”
“Trick?” Logan asked, his usually deep voice rising with fake innocence. “Why would you think it’s a trick?”
Frustration clutched at his stomach, knotting his guts. “Because Mom’s been trying to get me to go to this damn wedding before I even got on a plane to head back...”
“Home,” Logan finished for him. “You’re home. And Tanya Chesterfield and Stephen Wochholz are your friends. Why wouldn’t you want to attend their wedding?”
Because the thought of Tanya marrying any man—let alone Stephen—made him physically sick. He shook his head. “We were friends in high school,” Cooper reminded his brother and himself. “That was a dozen years ago.”
And as beautiful as Tanya was, it was a miracle that she wasn’t already married with a couple of kids. It wasn’t as if she would have been pining over him. They hadn’t shared more than a couple of kisses in high school before agreeing that they were better as friends just as she and Stephen were. But now she was marrying Stephen...
They made sense, though. More sense than he and Tanya ever would have. She was a damned heiress to billions and he was an ex-marine working for his big brother.
Maybe...
Logan was focused on him now, studying him through narrowed blue eyes. Cooper looked so much like Logan and his twin, with the same blue eyes and black hair, that people had often questioned if they were actually triplets. But Cooper was eighteen months younger than Parker and Logan. And they never let him forget it.
Finally Logan spoke, “Stephen still considers you a friend. He requested you be his best man.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. Before his brother could reply, he answered his own question, “Mom...” As much as he loved her, the woman was infuriating. “She’s obsessed with this damn wedding!”
“Weddings are her business,” Logan replied with pride.
For years their mother had put all her energy and love into her family—taking on the roles of both mother and father after her police-officer husband had been killed in the line of duty fifteen years ago. But when her youngest—and only girl—had gone off to college, she had found a new vocation—saving the church where she and Cooper’s father had been married from demolition and turning it into a wedding venue with her as planner.
“And security is our business,” Cooper said. His brother had promised him a job with Payne Protection the minute his enlistment ended. He had even brought him directly to the office from the airport, but that had been a couple of days ago and he had yet to give him a job. Until tonight...
“That’s why you need to get over to the church,” Logan told him.
“For security? At a wedding?” He snorted his derision.
“Tanya is the granddaughter of a billionaire,” Logan needlessly reminded him.
As if Cooper hadn’t been brutally aware of the differences between her lifestyle and his, her grandfather had pointed out that a fatherless kid like him with no prospects for the future had nothing to offer an heiress like Tanya. Benedict Bradford had wanted a doctor or lawyer for his eldest granddaughter—a man worthy of her. He hadn’t considered a soldier who might not make it through his deployments worthy of Tanya. Neither had Cooper. The old man had been dead for years now, but Benedict Bradford would have approved of Stephen, who had become a corporate attorney.
“Being a billionaire’s granddaughter never put her in danger before,” Cooper said. Or his mother definitely would have told him about it. And if that had been the case, he wouldn’t have waited until his enlistment ended before coming home.
Logan lifted up his cell phone and turned it toward Cooper. “This might say otherwise...”
Coop peered at a dark, indiscernible image on the small screen. “What the hell is that?”
“Black roses,” Logan replied with a shudder of revulsion. “They were delivered to the church today.”
“That doesn’t say danger,” Cooper insisted. “That says mix-up at the florist’s.”
Logan shook his head. “The wedding’s tomorrow, so the real flowers aren’t being delivered until morning.”
Cooper arched an eyebrow now, questioning how his brother was so knowledgeable of wedding policy and procedure.
“It’s Mom,” Logan said. “Of course we help her out from time to time. Like now. You need to get to the church.”
“You just said the wedding’s tomorrow.”
“So that means the rehearsal’s tonight,” Logan said with a snort of disgust at Cooper’s ignorance.
But he’d already been gone—first to boot camp and then a base in Okinawa—when their mother had bought the old church. He had no knowledge of weddings and absolutely no desire to learn about them.
“So if someone wants to stop the wedding from happening,” Logan continued, “they’ll make their move tonight.”
Someone wanted to stop the wedding. But Cooper had no intention of making a move. Nothing had changed since high school. There had been nothing between Tanya and him then but friendship. And there was less than nothing between them now. He hadn’t talked to her in years.
But if she was in danger...
* * *
HER HAND SHOOK as Tanya lifted the zippered garment bag containing her wedding gown toward the hook hanging on the wall of the bride’s dressing room. It wasn’t the weight of the yards of satin and lace that strained her muscles but the weight of the guilt bearing down on her shoulders. I can’t do this! It’s not right...
But neither was her grandfather’s manipulation. Even a decade after his death, the old man hadn’t given up trying to control his family. A couple of decades ago, he had bought off Tanya’s father, so that he had left her mother and her and her sister, forcing them to move in with her grandfather.
That place had been the exact opposite of the bright room in which Tanya stood now. The bride’s dressing room was all white wainscoting and soft pink paint. That house had been cold and dark. She shuddered at just the thought of the mausoleum. But then she smiled as she remembered who had called the drafty mansion that first. Cooper Payne.
He had kissed her there—after he’d pushed her up against one of the pillars of the front porch. That kiss had happened more than a dozen years ago, but her heart beat erratically at the memory. It had never pounded that hard over any other kiss. Her very first kiss...
Maybe that was why it had meant so much. Maybe that was why, even though it had been years since she’d seen him, she thought so often of Cooper Payne. It was probably good that he’d turned down Stephen’s request to be his best man. Good that he wasn’t going to be standing there when she followed through with this charade.
She wouldn’t be able to utter her vows—to lie—with him looking at her. Not that he’d ever been able to tell when she was lying...
He had believed her when she’d agreed with him that the kiss—and the few that had followed it—had been a mistake, that they were only meant to be friends. She had nodded and smiled even while her teenage heart had been breaking.
Maybe it was the memory of that pain that had kept her from ever falling in love again. But then there had also been those threats. Stephen was convinced they were empty. But what if they weren’t?
Should she risk it, as Stephen had advised? Or should she forfeit her inheritance?
She glanced into the antique mirror that stood next to where the garment bag hung, but she quickly turned away from the image of blond hair and haunted green eyes. She couldn’t even look at herself right now. If she followed through with this farce, she would never be able to look at herself again.
She breathed a ragged sigh. She wouldn’t miss the money; it had never been hers anyway. But she’d had plans for it—good plans, charitable plans...
Her grandfather had never practiced any charity—not even at home. Benedict Bradford had really been a mean old miser. So giving away his money would have been the perfect revenge for how he’d treated her mother and her and her sister.
But a wedding shouldn’t be about revenge. Or money. Or even charity. It should be about love. And while Tanya loved her groom, she wasn’t in love with him.
“I—I can’t do this...”
Not the wedding. Not even the damn rehearsal. She crossed the room and jerked open the door to the vestibule and nearly ran into Cooper Payne’s mother. Petite and slender with coppery-red hair and warm brown eyes, Mrs. Payne was exactly the opposite of her tall, dark, muscular sons. Only the youngest—her daughter—looked like her.
“What’s the matter, honey?” the older woman asked as she gripped Tanya’s trembling arms. “Are you all right?”
Tanya shook her head. “No, nothing’s right...”
“I know the rest of the wedding party hasn’t shown up yet, but there’s no rush,” Mrs. Payne assured her, her voice as full of warmth and comfort as her eyes. “Reverend James and I—”
She didn’t care about the rest of the wedding party. “Stephen—is Stephen here?”
Mrs. Payne nodded. “I showed him to the groom’s quarters a while ago, so that he could stow his tux there for tomorrow, like you’ve stowed your dress. Then you’ll have less to worry about for the ceremony.”
There was not going to be a ceremony. But Tanya couldn’t tell anyone that until she’d told Stephen. He’d concocted this crazy scheme in the first place because he was her friend, because he’d always been there for her. But she couldn’t take advantage of that friendship, of him.
“Where are the groom’s quarters?” she asked.
“You need to wait until the others show,” Mrs. Payne said. “So that the rehearsal can proceed just as the ceremony will tomorrow.”
“No, I—I need to talk to Stephen,” she insisted. “Now.” Before the farce went any further.
Mrs. Payne’s brown eyes widened. But after having worked with so many happy couples over the years, she must have realized something was off with them—that Tanya was hardly an ecstatic bride. “The groom’s quarters are behind the altar.”
Tanya crossed the vestibule and opened the heavy oak doors to the church. Since night had already fallen, the stained-glass windows were dark. The only light came from the sconces on the walls, casting shadows from the pews into the aisle. So she didn’t notice that the red velvet runner was tangled. She tripped over it, catching herself before she dropped to her knees. That was weird—usually Mrs. Payne never missed a thing. No detail escaped her attention.
The wedding planner had worked so hard that guilt tugged at Tanya. She hated to disappoint the woman. But she couldn’t go through with a lie.
Stephen would understand that. It wasn’t as if he thought of her as anything other than a friend either, so he wouldn’t be hurt.
The door to the room behind the altar stood ajar. She pushed it open to darkness. “Stephen?”
Had he changed his mind, too? She didn’t blame him, but she doubted that he would have just left without talking to her first. She fumbled along the wall, feeling for the switch, when her fingers smeared across something wet. That wasn’t something Mrs. Payne would have missed either. The chapel was spotless.
Tanya flipped on the switch, bathing the room in light—and discovered it had already been bathed in blood. It was spattered across the floor, the couch and the wall. Panic and fear rose up at the horror, choking her, so that she could barely utter the scream burning her throat.
* * *
COOPER HEARD IT. Even though the scream wasn’t loud, the sheer terror of it pierced his heart. He ran past his mother, who was already halfway down the aisle of the church—and toward the danger. Years had passed since he’d heard it, but he had instinctively recognized Tanya’s voice.
“Stay here,” he ordered his mother as he reached beneath his leather jacket and pulled his weapon from the arm holster.
She pointed behind the altar, to the room from which light spilled. And Tanya. She backed out of the doorway, her hand pressed across her mouth as if to hold in another scream. As he rushed up behind her, she collided with Cooper. Then she pulled her hand away and screamed again.
He spun her around to face him. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “It’s me.”
Her green eyes, damp with tears, widened, and then she clutched at him, pressing against his chest. “Cooper! Thank God it’s you!”
Her slight body trembled in his arms that automatically closed around her, pulling her even closer. She fit perfectly against him. But he was just comforting her, just making sure she was all right.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, and her silky blond hair brushed against his throat. “No, no...”
He peered over her head into the room, and then he saw it. All the blood...
So much blood.
Despite his order to stay put, his mother joined them. “What’s wrong—” she started to ask but gasped when she saw it, too.
“Call 911,” Cooper said, thrusting his phone at her.
Then he stepped inside the room to look for the body. With that much blood, there had to be a body...
A dead one.
Chapter Two
“There is no body...”
Cooper’s words drifted to Tanya through a thick haze of shock. He wasn’t speaking to her, though; he hadn’t since he’d asked if she was hurt. Of course he had been busy—searching the church and the surrounding grounds as well as talking to his family and the police officers who had arrived to investigate the scene of the crime.
The police had spoken to her. A somber-faced male officer had asked countless questions and not one of them had been if she was okay. Mrs. Payne had shooed off the man a while ago when she’d brought Tanya the cup of tea that was cooling in her hands. What the older woman had told the officer was right—Tanya had no idea what had happened. She’d only turned on the light to find the blood. All that blood...
The smear she’d found on the wall stained her hands. That was why she hadn’t lifted the cup. It was why the heat of the tea would never warm her. She had blood on her hands...
“So we don’t know,” Cooper continued, his dark head bent close to his brother’s, “if we’re looking at a homicide or abduction.”
Was it Logan or Parker to whom he spoke? They were identical twins. Whichever one it was asked, “Why would it be either?”
Cooper shrugged shoulders so broad that they tested the seams of his black leather jacket. Despite the blood and the fear, during that moment she’d clung to him, she’d felt safe—with his arms around her. Just as he hadn’t talked to her, he hadn’t touched her since then either. Maybe that was why she felt so cold that she trembled.
“This is Stephen we’re talking about,” Cooper’s brother persisted. “He was everyone’s friend in high school. Did he change that much?”
“No,” Tanya replied. “He’s still everyone’s friend.” Her best friend. Where was he? And what had happened to him?
“Then maybe this isn’t what it looks like,” the twin replied.
“It looks like a crime scene,” Cooper said. Yellow tape cordoned off the groom’s quarters that police techs had photographed and processed for prints and whatever other evidence they’d found. “There’s a lot of blood. The signs of a struggle. It’s obvious somebody was dragged down the aisle.”
That was why the runner had been bunched. Like the walls of the groom’s quarters, it had also been stained with blood. While she’d been in the bride’s room, someone had attacked her groom and dragged him from the church. How hadn’t she or Mrs. Payne heard any of the struggle?
Tanya had been in the bride’s room, deciding that she did not want to be a bride. Mrs. Payne had been downstairs in her office talking with the reverend. Unable to have a rehearsal without a groom, the minister had left after talking to the police.
“What the hell did you do?” the maid of honor, Tanya’s sister, shouted. She ran down the aisle toward the front of the church where Tanya sat in the pew near where the Payne brothers stood. But Rochelle didn’t make it very far before she tripped over the rumpled runner.
Tanya’s only other bridesmaid, who was also Cooper’s sister, rushed up behind her and helped her to her unsteady feet. “Rochelle, let me get you some more coffee...”
“I don’t need coffee!” Tanya’s little sister shouted, her words only slightly slurred. “I need to know what she did with Stephen!”
“What I did with him?” Tanya asked. She set the teacup on the pew and rose up to meet her sister as Rochelle finally made it down the aisle.
“You don’t care about him at all,” Rochelle accused. “You’ve just been using him to get Grandfather’s money. That’s all you care about!” She vaulted herself at Tanya, knocking her to the ground.
The shock finally wore off—leaving Tanya able to register the pain. She felt the hardness of the floor beneath her back and the weight of her sister, who, despite the fact she was younger, was quite a bit taller and heavier. She could barely breathe with her on top of her. And she felt the sharp sting of her sister’s slap. She had no right to fight back—not when everything Rochelle said was probably true.
But this was not the time or the place for Rochelle to throw one of her temper tantrums. Tanya had been trying to hold herself together for so long that she finally snapped under the emotional and physical pressure. “Grow up, you brat,” she yelled. Using probably more strength than necessary, she shoved her sister back.
Rochelle didn’t stay off. As Tanya stood up, her sister launched herself at her again. But this time strong hands caught Tanya before she hit the ground. With an arm wrapped around her waist, Cooper lifted her nearly off her feet.
The other bridesmaid, Nikki Payne, caught Rochelle, and tried to control her swinging hands and flailing feet. For her efforts, she took a hit to her face.
“Whatever happened to Stephen is your fault,” Rochelle accused. “It’s all your fault!”
Another stinging blow connected, bringing tears to Tanya’s eyes. But the tears weren’t from physical pain. Rochelle’s verbal assault had hit her harder than her slap. Because she was right.
Whatever had happened to Stephen was all Tanya’s fault. She literally had his blood on her hands.
“Aren’t you glad you had brothers?” Cooper asked his sister as she rubbed her fingertips along the scratch on her cheek and winced. Nikki had somehow subdued her friend while Cooper had carried Tanya out of her reach. When Rochelle had been swinging, Tanya had barely defended herself from her younger sister’s attack. Maybe she was in shock over having found Stephen’s blood in the groom’s quarters.
“Yeah,” Nikki agreed. “You guys just punched each other. It was more civilized.”
“We never punched you,” he said.
“No,” she agreed with a heavy sigh, almost as if she was disappointed that they hadn’t. As the youngest and the only girl with three older brothers, she had often been left out of their roughhousing because they hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
Tanya and her sister didn’t have that relationship. Rochelle had definitely wanted to hurt her. How badly, though?
He could understand Rochelle being resentful of her sister. Tanya was far more beautiful—with more delicate features and blonder hair and a thinner figure than her sister. But how deep was that resentment?
“Why’d you bring her here?” Cooper asked. At least he hoped Nikki had been the driver.
“She’s Tanya’s maid of honor,” she replied. “I’ve been looking for her all night to make sure she got to the rehearsal.”
“Mom put you to work, too?”
She sighed. “Enlisted me as part of the wedding party. I think she suspected there’d be a problem with Rochelle, and she and I have known each other since high school.”
“You did subdue her.” So much so that the woman sat quietly in a pew now, tears streaming down her flushed face. She seemed more distraught over the groom’s disappearance than the bride was.
“Please point that out to Logan,” Nikki beseeched him. Their eldest brother was on the other side of the heavy oak doors, talking on his cell phone in the vestibule. She shot him a glare through the windows at the back of the chapel. “He keeps me tied to a desk. He refuses to let me do an actual physical protection assignment.”
Cooper bit his tongue before he verbally agreed with Logan. Nikki was so petite and fragile looking—just like their mother with her copper-colored hair and big brown eyes. But she had handled herself remarkably well with the taller and heavier Chesterfield sister. He touched her scratched cheek, making her wince again.
“Hey, I didn’t want to hurt her,” Nikki explained. “Or I would have taken her down faster. She’s a friend, though...” Then she reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry about Stephen. Do you have any idea what happened?”
“We don’t know anything for certain. There’s a hell of a lot of blood in the groom’s quarters. But until the crime lab does a DNA test, we don’t even know for certain that it’s his.” Except if it wasn’t, where the hell was he, then? If there wasn’t all that blood, Cooper might have believed his friend had just gotten a case of cold feet. He might have believed that if Stephen was marrying any woman but Tanya.
“Mom confirmed he was the only one in the room,” Nikki said.
“Where was his best man?” Cooper asked.
Nikki lifted a reddish brow. “Where was he?” she asked, obviously referring to him.
“I told him I couldn’t do it,” Cooper reminded his little sister.
“Why not?”
“Why?” Cooper asked. “Why did he even ask me? We haven’t seen each other in years.”
“He showed up at the house to see you every time you were home on leave,” Nikki said. “He stayed in touch.”
But they’d both been busy. The letters few and far between and Cooper’s visits home even more infrequent. He shrugged. “I just thought it was weird that he didn’t have a closer friend he wanted to stand up there with him.”
And weirder that he wanted Cooper. They had been good friends in high school—so good that Stephen must have realized how Cooper had really felt about Tanya. Had he wanted to rub his face in the fact he’d gotten the girl Cooper had wanted? And if so, then they hadn’t really been that good of friends.
But Cooper still cared about him—still wanted him safe—which he probably would have been had Cooper actually been his best man. Then Stephen wouldn’t have been alone in the groom’s quarters.
“There are a couple of guys who were planning on standing up there with him,” Nikki said. “A friend from his office and a cousin, but I recruited them to help me find Rochelle. We’d been searching all the bars in River City.”
“How’d you know that’s where she was?” Maybe Logan was underestimating their sister’s potential as a security expert.
“She left me a drunk voice mail.”
Cooper glanced over at the crying woman and sighed. “So interrogating her would probably be a waste of time until Mom gets more coffee in her.”
“You don’t need to interrogate her,” Tanya said as she rejoined them with an ice pack pressed against the cheek her sister had viciously slapped.
Apparently his mother was prepared for every wedding emergency—even catfights between the bride and maid of honor. What was her plan to handle a missing groom?
“I can tell you whatever Rochelle can,” Tanya said.
But would she be truthful with him? “You’ll tell me why she thinks you’re just using Stephen to get your inheritance?”
Nikki nudged his arm. “Easy. She’s not a suspect.”
Maybe she should have been. As he’d already noted, she wasn’t nearly as upset as a madly in love bride should have been when her groom mysteriously and apparently violently disappeared. When Cooper had quietly, so she wouldn’t overhear him, questioned her reaction earlier, his mother and brother had insisted she was in shock.
But her green eyes were clear now and direct as she replied, “I’m not using Stephen.”
“What about the inheritance? Your grandfather died a decade ago—don’t you already have your money?” But if she did, why pick his mom’s place for her wedding? The chapel was small and the reception hall in the basement was hardly elegant enough for a billionaire bride.
She shook her head.
“Not yet,” another voice chimed in to answer for her. A burly gray-haired man joined them inside the church. With his muscular build and military haircut, he looked more like a cop, but Cooper recognized the lawyer, Arthur Gregory, who’d made countless house calls to the mausoleum. “Neither she nor Rochelle will inherit until they marry.”
If Rochelle was right and her sister was just after her inheritance, wouldn’t she have gotten married ten years ago? Wouldn’t Rochelle have?
“He’s trying to control us even after his death,” Rochelle murmured. “Mean son of a—”
“Miss Chesterfield,” the lawyer admonished her. “Your grandfather had only your best interests at heart.”
“He had no heart,” Rochelle retorted. “The only reason he wanted us married was because he didn’t think a female had enough brains to handle the kind of money he was leaving to us.” She uttered a derisive snort. “Like our father did such a great job. He blew through all that money Grandfather gave him to divorce Mom and take off.”
Cooper had never known what had happened to Tanya’s father. She had always avoided talking about him. He’d been sensitive to that since he’d never wanted to talk about how he had lost his dad either.
“Mr. Gregory, is there a way around the will?” Tanya asked the lawyer.
Her sister gasped. “We don’t even know what’s happened to Stephen and all you care about is the money?”
“I care about him,” Tanya said. “That’s why I need the money. In case this is a kidnapping, I’ll need it to pay the ransom to get him back.”
Arthur Gregory sighed. “There is no way to inherit that money unless you’re married, Miss Chesterfield. And as you know, you only have a few more days...”
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