Главная страница | Триллеры | Single Mum′s Bodyguard

Single Mum's Bodyguard
Lisa Childs
A pretend relationship between a bodyguard and single mum turns all too real! Emilia Ecklund’s either losing her mind – or someone wants her to think she is! She hears her child crying when he's smiling. She sees intruders where there are none. She's desperate, so she asks her brother's best friend, former Marine and professional bodyguard Dane Sutton, to investigate. But the only way is for him to move into her home…and then her bed!Dane's secret mission is to pose as Emilia's boyfriend while watching every door and window like a hawk. He vows to keep things purely professional, but he's severely tempted as his feelings intensify. And as the threats escalate, the guarded loner realises he has everything to lose…


A pretend relationship between a bodyguard and single mom turns all too real in the latest Bachelor Bodyguards romance
Emilia Ecklund hears her child cry when he’s smiling. She sees intruders where there are none. She’s either losing her mind—or someone wants her to think she is. Desperate, she asks her brother’s best friend, former Marine and Payne Protection Agency bodyguard Dane Sutton, to investigate. But the only way is for him to move into her home...and bed.
Dane’s secret mission: to pose as Emilia’s boyfriend while watching every door and window like a hawk. He vows to keep things purely professional, but he’s severely tempted as his feelings intensify. And as the threats escalate, the guarded loner has everything to lose.
Emilia blinked and stared up at him, the fear still in her pale blue eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Dane asked her.
Clasping her baby son tightly against her with one arm, she gestured with her other hand at the window. “Someone was there—trying to get in.”
He glanced at the window. “Nobody’s there.”
“There was,” she insisted, her voice tremulous. With fear or doubt?
He glanced around the room, at the teenage girls who struggled to comfort crying babies and toddlers. One of the girls shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”
Emilia reached out now and clasped Dane’s arm. His skin tingled beneath her fingers. “There was someone there—trying to open the window.”
He nodded. “I’ll check it out.” But she held tightly to his arm, so he couldn’t pull away—so he couldn’t escape her and all those crying children.
If he didn’t leave soon, he might do something stupid…like reach for her again, like try to hold her.
* * *
Be sure to check out the previous books in the exciting Bachelor Bodyguards series.
Single Mum’s Bodyguard
Lisa Childs


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel (a Mills & Boon story, of course) at age eleven, all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, www.lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or her snailmail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
For my family. Thank you all so much for your unwavering love and support!
Contents
Cover (#ub1a8644c-4bb7-5c79-bd51-cddc4dfb1044)
Back Cover Text (#uac99ef85-d07e-5b02-894f-9631f825e8db)
Introduction (#uf9880eb8-7acc-522d-8852-83ccdcb3c114)
Title Page (#uc7ad6745-9076-5914-8333-c787948294b6)
About the Author (#u6124ec18-39bf-5e3a-bdb5-a3d1a89476e9)
Dedication (#u27a76814-73a4-5137-939a-288336c2c542)
Chapter 1 (#ua1953175-ce37-586b-903b-1fa81b320de2)
Chapter 2 (#u5fcf97af-c561-586d-9eee-5a12bc551961)
Chapter 3 (#u4f3c13f7-f763-51e9-a6b2-9add77cae7d2)
Chapter 4 (#u46eada0c-ec4f-5251-b8ed-5a1393417ff0)
Chapter 5 (#u5f35f087-b9ee-5462-8b5d-529140c41c3f)
Chapter 6 (#u3b504150-ec96-54b5-a20b-b9d987a842ee)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
The crying awoke Emilia—as it always did. But it sounded as if it were coming from a great distance instead of just down the hall. Why did it seem so muffled?
She knew better than to put anything in the crib with the infant. She wouldn’t take any risk with him ever again. “Blue...” she murmured as she jerked fully awake.
Throwing back the blankets, she jumped from the bed and ran from her room, hitting her shoulder against the jamb as she exited. Pain radiated down her arm.
This was real. This wasn’t a dream like all the times before she’d heard that faint cry, when she had reached for her stomach, for her child—only to find her womb empty, her baby gone...
Except that hadn’t been a dream, either. That had been the horror she’d lived for weeks until she and her son had been rescued.
Her feet slipped on the hardwood floor as she hurried down the hall toward the bedroom on the other side of the bath. She banged into that jamb, too, while rushing into the nursery. A breeze rustled the wispy blue-and-white-striped curtains and rattled the blind pulled over the window.
The open window.
She hadn’t left that window open. She was always so careful to make sure that it was shut and locked. She wouldn’t have...
She could barely hear the crying now. It was far in the distance. “Blue...”
Was he gone, too?
Her legs trembled, nearly folding beneath her, as she walked toward the crib. Dread gripped her. She was afraid to look, afraid that it was happening all over again.
She had lost her little boy once. She couldn’t lose him again. Her hands shook and she wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the white-painted crib. And finally, she forced herself to look.
Her heart lurched, swelling with love, as it did every time she gazed upon her child. He lay on his side, his eyes closed, his little fist clenched as if he was ready to start fighting bad guys—just like his uncle.
Relief slipped from her lips in a long, shuddery breath. He was fine. Blue was fine, sleeping peacefully. There were no tears on his cheeks, which had finally begun to fill out. He looked happy and healthy.
And she’d thought she was, too, now that she had him back. But she could still hear the crying. Maybe it was coming from another house. But it hadn’t sounded that way when she’d first heard it. It had seemed to come from down the hall.
And it sounded that way again but now the direction had changed, as if it were coming from her room. She had cried herself to sleep a few nights, thinking of the mistakes she’d made, the mistakes that had nearly cost her Blue and her brother and the woman he loved and Emilia’s own life, as well.
She had almost lost everything. But thanks to her brother, Lars, and Nikki Payne and Lars’s friends, Blue was safe. Emilia was safe. She had lost nothing.
The sound of crying persisted. It sounded like Blue’s cry. But he was still asleep. She reached down for him, tempted to hold him and assure herself he was all right. As her fingers brushed across his back, he murmured and a soft sigh slipped through his rosebud-shaped lips.
He was too peaceful. Disturbing him would be selfish. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be that kind of parent, the one her father had been when he’d deserted his sick wife and kids.
No. She had to leave him alone, had to let him sleep. Most new parents would have been envious of how much her son slept. But she knew he did that because he hadn’t had anyone there for him those first few weeks of his life. He hadn’t had anyone that cared enough to come when he’d cried. And her heart broke over that, over knowing that she had already let down her son. She wouldn’t do it again.
She forced herself to step away from his crib. Along with the crying, the breeze reached her, stirring her nightgown as it did the curtains and the blind. Shivering, she lifted the blind and slid the window closed, locking it. As she did, she remembered checking that lock earlier—when she had first put Blue down in his bed. The window had definitely been closed and locked.
Who had opened it?
Lars wasn’t home. He’d moved in with Nikki nearly a week ago. Emilia had had to convince him that it was okay, that she would be fine without him.
But she wasn’t fine. She was scared. Someone must have been inside the house. Who and why?
Was someone after her baby again? She turned back toward the crib. She wanted to lift Blue from it, wanted to hold on so tightly to her little boy that no one could get him away from her—ever.
But she resisted that temptation. Instead she settled into the rocker recliner in the corner of the nursery. With that crying echoing inside her head, she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep anyway. She would sit vigil, watching her son to protect him.
But from what? If someone had unlocked and opened the window, they would have had to be inside the room. So why hadn’t they just taken Blue if he was what they really wanted?
She was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened. The adoption lawyer who’d stolen her baby was dead. To save Nikki, Lars had been forced to kill him. Myron Webber wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t taking her baby or anyone else’s.
Maybe his was the crying she heard—as he burned in hell. Maybe he was haunting her. What he’d done to her had certainly been haunting her. Maybe that was all it was: flashbacks and nightmares from what had happened.
Because why would someone break in only to open a window? It made no sense.
It made more sense that she had left it open, that she hadn’t locked it.
But that wasn’t the case. Was it?
Had she kept everything she’d thought she was losing only to lose her mind instead?
* * *
He must have lost his damn mind. That was the only reason Dane Sutton had for deciding not to quit the Payne Protection Agency. He’d been all set on turning in his resignation to Cooper Payne, his boss and a fellow former Marine. But Cooper had persuaded him to give the job a chance.
Yet it wasn’t the job Dane didn’t like: it was everything else that encompassed the Payne Protection Agency. Family. Romance. Love.
He had vowed long ago to have nothing to do with any of those things. He’d tried family once, although it hadn’t been his choice. Abandoned as an infant by a teenage mom who left him in a school bathroom, he’d been adopted by an older couple. But like his young mother, they had also realized they weren’t really interested in being parents. So because he’d had this example, Dane had no idea what a family was actually supposed to be.
He hadn’t liked what he’d witnessed with the Paynes. They interfered in each other’s lives and even in the lives of the people who worked for them. They tried to bring everyone into this family of theirs. He suspected it was probably more like a cult, though. He shuddered just thinking of it. It wasn’t safe for him to stay.
But something had compelled him to stick around River City, Michigan, and the Payne Protection Agency.
Friendship.
That, he was very familiar and comfortable with. The guys from his unit were his best friends. Now his boss and coworkers. He hadn’t been able to leave them behind during a mission. And he couldn’t leave them now.
But he would just have to be very, very careful he didn’t wind up like Lars, the blond giant of a man who was sitting beside him in a Payne Protection Agency vehicle, holding a ring over the console. Dane was behind the wheel of the black SUV.
“So tell me—what do you think?” the guy eagerly asked him, his pale blue eyes bright with something almost like giddiness.
Dane sighed. “You know I love you, man, but only as a friend. I gotta turn you down.”
Lars swung his free hand into Dane’s shoulder. The tap probably would have knocked a smaller man through the driver’s door, but Dane was nearly as big as his friend. “I’m damn well not proposing to you.”
“Phewww,” Dane said. “You made me nervous. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”
Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve given that speech a few times.”
“So have you,” Dane reminded him.
Lars hadn’t been any more eager for romance or love than Dane was. In fact, with his sister missing, falling in love had been the last thing on Lars’s mind.
Until he started at Payne Protection.
The security agency might guard people’s lives but they were hell on hearts.
Lars glanced down at the ring he held out, and for a second the brightness of his eyes dimmed. “Do you think she’ll give me that speech?”
Dane’s stomach tightened into knots. He hated this stuff, hated seeing his friend so anxious. Lars had already suffered enough when his sister had gone missing and been presumed dead. It would be so much worse for him if he were to be turned down now by the woman he loved. “Maybe you should wait. You two haven’t been together very long. And Nikki has made it clear she wants nothing to do with marriage.”
“With weddings,” Lars corrected him. “She doesn’t want a wedding.”
“What the hell’s the difference?” he asked as he fumbled with the bow tie at his neck. That damn thing was cutting off his circulation.
Lars snapped the case closed on the ring and reached across to adjust Dane’s tie. “This. The monkey suits, the dresses, the pomp and ceremony—this is the wedding. It’s one day. The marriage is the life.”
“So you think she’s fine with the life and just wants to skip the day?” Dane hadn’t always been the greatest at math but one day seemed a hell of a lot easier to get through than a lifetime.
Lars sighed wistfully. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
Dane couldn’t blow smoke and offer his friend false assurances. He always had to tell the truth—unless he’d been sworn to keep someone else’s secret. “That’s a hell of a risk you’re taking.”
“Proposing?” Lars asked. “What’s the worst that can happen? She can say no.”
Dane figured it was a bigger risk if she said yes. But he just shrugged.
“And if I’m late to her mother’s wedding, she’s sure to say no,” Lars said as he shoved open the passenger’s door. “We better get inside the chapel.”
Dane stepped out of the driver’s side and walked around the truck, but he hesitated before heading up the steep steps to the double doors of the little white chapel. His heart pounded slowly and heavily with dread in a chest that felt constricted in that damn tuxedo.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. “I get why you are. You’re dating the bride’s daughter. But why was I told I needed to attend?”
It hadn’t been an invitation. It had been a command.
Lars stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back toward him. “You haven’t heard about what happened the last time the bride and groom were in this chapel together?”
Dane shook his head. Unlike Lars, he was trying to keep his distance from the Paynes. He didn’t want to be sucked into their little family cult. He wouldn’t have even been here if Cooper hadn’t made it an assignment.
“The whole wedding party was taken hostage and the groom was shot and nearly died.”
Dane shuddered. “Talk about bad luck. Shouldn’t they have taken that as an omen and forgotten about trying to get married again?”
“Woodrow Lynch wasn’t the groom that day. He was the father of the bride,” Lars explained. “He’s also a former FBI chief who’s made a lot of enemies over the course of his career.”
Dane glanced at the other people, all dressed up, heading into the church. Could one of them be a threat? “So he thinks there might be another attempt to kill him?” He studied the people more carefully, looking for not so carefully concealed weapons.
Lars gripped his shoulder and drew his attention back to him. “It’s possible. That’s why I wish Emilia wasn’t working today.”
Dane froze. “Emilia?”
“Yeah, she works for Penny Payne,” Lars said, pulling his hand away to gesture at the church Penny had converted into her full-service wedding planning venue. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
Dane had been trying to avoid any mention of Emilia. She had been the focus of his world for too many weeks when she’d been missing. That was why he’d been so fascinated with the photo Lars had given him to help find her. That was the only reason....
But why was his pulse quickening? Why could he feel his heart pounding faster and harder now?
“No...” Dane murmured but his reply wasn’t just for Lars. It was for himself. No.
He couldn’t see Emilia. He already saw her too much—every time he closed his damn eyes.
“She insisted on coming today,” Lars said, his voice gruff with frustration and concern. “She said it was the most important day for her boss and she wouldn’t miss it even though I tried to tell her it might not be safe.”
And Emilia had already been through so much. Dane understood his friend’s fear. Hell, he even shared it.
“Nikki was one of those hostages last time,” Lars said, his fear making his deep voice even gruffer. “She was nearly killed. So I’m going to need to keep an eye on her.”
“She’s going to hate that,” Dane reminded him. Nikki Payne was fiercely independent. There was no way she was saying yes to Lars’s proposal.
But before he could offer his friend any more advice, Lars continued, “So I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Emilia. You need to make sure nothing happens to her.” Lars’s brow was furrowed, his concern for his sister apparent.
Dane couldn’t refuse his request any more than he’d been able to ignore Cooper’s order to attend the wedding. Yeah, friendship had already caused him enough problems. He wanted nothing to do with family, romance or love.
“I also need you to talk to Emilia,” Lars said, “and make sure that, after everything she went through, she’s really okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Dane asked. “Myron Webber is dead. He can’t hurt her anymore.”
“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he’s not still hurting her,” Lars said. “She woke up with nightmares for weeks after we rescued her.”
“PTSD?” he asked.
Lars nodded. “I think so. But I never really experienced that myself. That’s why I need you to talk to her.”
“Why me?” Dane asked.
“I bunked next to you for months at a time,” Lars reminded him. “You have as many nightmares as she does.”
Dane tensed. “I don’t talk about that stuff...” Not with his friends. He certainly wasn’t going to talk to some young woman who already had enough nightmares of her own. “I can’t help her.”
Lars studied his face for a while before uttering a sigh of resignation. “Fine. Just watch out for her, make sure she doesn’t get any more nightmares from whatever the hell might happen here today.”
Just what kind of weddings did Penny Payne plan that people risked developing PTSD after them?
* * *
A lot of weddings had taken place in Penny Payne’s Little White Wedding Chapel. Some real. Some staged to flush out serial killers. Some hadn’t taken place at all. Brides had changed their minds. Or gunmen had taken the church hostage before the wedding was able to take place.
Penny wasn’t worried about this bride changing her mind. She stared at her reflection in the oval mirror in the bride’s dressing room.
Was it ridiculous that she wore a gown?
It wasn’t white. At fifty...something...and with four grown kids, that would have been ridiculous. But the tea-length, lacy bronze dress looked like a wedding gown. For the second time in her life, Penny was a bride.
Her first groom had been a boy. Together they’d grown up. And he had become a man—one who’d made mistakes. One mistake had brought a child into the world with another woman. One had gotten him killed.
She had survived both of his mistakes. But then she’d spent the next nearly two decades afraid of making a mistake of her own. So she’d focused on her kids and her business and she’d protected her heart—until that day she’d nearly lost her chapel to those gunmen.
Her kids—the ones she’d given birth to and the ones she’d claimed as hers—had saved everyone that day. But Penny had still lost something she had never intended to risk again.
Her heart.
But this groom she could trust. He wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Woodrow Lynch wouldn’t make mistakes that would hurt her. He loved her as much as she loved him.
No. She wasn’t going to back out and neither would Woodrow. Penny wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t even worried about all the minute details of a ceremony that she usually insisted on overseeing herself.
She didn’t need to do that anymore, not since she’d hired Emilia Ecklund. The beautiful blonde appeared next to her in the reflection in the mirror. She carefully pinned the tiny bronze lace veil onto Penny’s coif of auburn curls.
“You look so beautiful,” Emilia told her with such awe that Penny couldn’t doubt her sincerity. She was such a sweet, sincere young woman. “Everything’s ready.”
Penny’s heart lurched. Not with nerves over the marriage. She knew that would be good. But now a few doubts flickered in about the wedding details. Emilia had seemed kind of distracted the past few weeks. Penny opened her mouth to ask a couple of questions, just to confirm.
But Emilia shushed her with a smile. “Everything’s ready,” she repeated with calm assurance. There was not even a trace of nerves in her soft voice or on her beautiful face.
Penny believed her. Emilia had been about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in hospitality and event planning when her world had been turned upside down. After her rescue, she had been working hard to right her world again.
Maybe too hard.
Dark circles rimmed her pale blue eyes. Of course, she had an infant at home, too. New mothers rarely got enough sleep. That was probably why she’d seemed distracted lately.
Penny reached up and patted her cheek. “Thank you, Emilia, for making not just this day so special for me but for making my workload so much lighter since you started working for me.”
Emilia’s beautiful eyes glistened with unshed tears, but she blinked her long black lashes and cleared away the moisture. She smiled again, but it was as if she had to force up the corners of her mouth.
“Is everything all right?” Penny asked her.
“Yes, I told you it was,” Emilia replied. “We’re ready to start the ceremony. Are you ready?”
Penny sucked in a sharp breath. She was getting married again. She was pledging to share the rest of her life with another. She couldn’t wait. “Yes, please send my kids in here. I am raring to walk down the aisle to my groom.”
But as Emilia turned away to open the door, Penny caught her arm. The odd sensation raced over her—one of those god-awful premonitions she had that something was about to go very wrong.
Not today.
Of all days, not today...
“What is it?” Emilia asked. Alarm drained the color from her face. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Definitely not,” Penny said. “I can’t wait to marry my soul mate. But...”
“I told you, everything’s fine.”
“I’m sure you did everything right,” Penny said. “But I have that feeling...”
Emilia sucked in a sharp breath now. Penny had told her about the feelings that came over her, about her instincts that warned her when something horrible was going to happen.
“I’ll double-check everything,” her assistant assured her. “Don’t worry.”
She hurried away before Penny could stop her.
Penny couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to Emilia. She hoped she was wrong. The young woman had already been through too much.
Chapter 2 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
Emilia’s heart pounded as she gave in to the nerves fluttering inside her. This was it, her chance to finally prove herself to her benevolent boss. Penny had been so sweet to take a chance on her, to give her not just a job but the responsibility of overseeing the woman’s wedding.
Nothing could go wrong.
But Penny’s premonitions were legendary. When she had one of her feelings that something bad was about to happen, it always did.
So Emilia didn’t waste time checking on the flowers. She already knew they were perfect. The minister had arrived, as had all the guests. The photographer had already begun taking pictures and setting up the camera to record the ceremony. The caterers were ready to serve for the reception in the banquet room in the chapel basement.
Emilia hadn’t lied when she’d assured Penny that everything was ready. For the ceremony...
But Emilia had that sense of disquiet, too, the same way that Penny did. Something bad was about to happen. That feeling compelled her to quickly cross the foyer to the steps leading down to the nearly walk-out-level basement. This was where the offices were and the banquet hall and kitchen.
And the nursery...
Along with all the Payne babies, Blue was there, too. Two nursery workers—teenage girls—watched all the children. But they were only teenagers. If someone tried to take one of the babies...
They wouldn’t be able to stop them.
But Emilia would.
She hastened her pace, her heels clicking against the stairs as she nearly ran down them. In her haste, she slipped. Her grasp on the railing kept her from tumbling to the concrete floor below. She steadied herself, finished descending the stairs and hurried down the hall.
Waiters and cooks milled around inside the banquet hall and the kitchen as she rushed past. Excitement hummed in the air. This was the wedding. The one everyone wanted to be absolutely perfect—because this was Penny’s wedding.
They all loved Penny Payne.
Emilia hadn’t known her as long as everyone else had, but she loved her, too. Loved her like the mother she’d never really had, because Mom had gotten sick when Emilia had been so young.
Penny was youthful and vivacious and affectionate. She was everything Emilia wished her mother had been and everything she wanted to be as a mother. Emilia didn’t want to let down the woman she admired so much.
But at the moment the wedding was the least of her concerns. She had to make certain Blue was safe. He was what mattered most to her now.
“Emilia...”
A deep voice murmured her name. She ignored it. She had no time now for questions about the colors of the napkins or when to serve the cake. She would answer all those again after she held her baby, after she made certain that Penny’s ominous premonition hadn’t been about Blue.
She was in such a rush that she nearly passed the door to the nursery. But she drew up short and reached out, grasping the knob. Her hand trembling, she turned it and pushed open the door. Little kids chattered and laughed. A soft voice sang. Small hands clapped.
Like the kitchen and the banquet hall, this room was abuzz with excitement, too—the excitement of little kids and babies.
One of the teenagers glanced up from where she played patty-cake with a black-haired, blue-eyed toddler. So many of the kids looked like that, with the blue eyes and black hair of the Payne males.
“Miss Ecklund, is everything all right?” the babysitter asked. With black hair and blue eyes, she might have been a Payne herself. Some of the kids were getting older now.
“That’s what I came to ask you,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
The girl’s brow furrowed. “With your son?”
“Yes.”
Looking at her as if she were being overly anxious, which she probably was, the girl nodded. “He’s fine.” She gestured toward one of the cribs against the wall. “He’s napping.”
Emilia stepped around children so she could get to her son. Like a few nights ago when she’d heard the crying, she approached the crib with fear and dread. And expelled a breath of relief when she found him sleeping peacefully.
She had overreacted to Penny’s premonition. It probably had nothing to do with Emilia. With a family that comprised of all bodyguards, Penny’s children were all exposed to danger.
Now Lars was a bodyguard, too. And she suspected he would soon be an official member of the Payne family if he was smart enough to ask the amazing Nikki to marry him. Her brother was smart.
She wished she was as smart as he was, as strong. She felt like she was losing her mind. But she’d rather lose that than her son.
He was here, though. He was safe just like he had been that night she’d been so worried she’d wound up bruising her shoulder crashing into doorframes. She glanced down at the bruise now. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn a sleeveless dress. Or at least she should have remembered to put on the sweater she’d left hanging over the back of her chair in her office.
She hadn’t needed to worry that night. Or now.
But yet she couldn’t step back. She had a million and one things to double-check. And she didn’t want to miss the ceremony, either.
She wanted to see Penny marry her soul mate even as she felt a pang of envy that she might never find hers. Her judgment was as poor as her mother’s had been. Just like her father, Blue’s father hadn’t been a man she could count on. He’d wanted only one thing from her. And it hadn’t been her heart.
Now her heart belonged to another male. To her son. She continued to stare down at her beautiful baby...until a shadow fell across him.
Then she glanced up at the window. Since this was the daylight section of the basement, the window was halfway up the wall. So she didn’t see a face. She saw only legs standing in front of that window. Then she saw the black-gloved hands reaching down to try to lift the sash.
To try to get inside that nursery full of children.
And a scream slipped from her throat.
* * *
Her scream tore at Dane’s heart, making it race with the fear he heard in her voice. Other cries echoed hers, startled cries of kids. He pushed open the door he’d seen her enter moments ago—as he’d followed her mad dash down the stairs and hall toward this room.
Toward her son...
He saw her hurriedly step back from the window with the baby clasped in her arms, nearly falling over the children sitting on the floor behind her.
This was Dane’s worst nightmare. A room full of crying kids. But the fear he’d heard in Emilia’s voice drew him to her side. “Emilia,” he said.
After he’d seen her nearly tumble down the stairs, he’d called out to her in the hall. But she’d ignored him. She ignored him again.
So he reached for her. And yet when his hand closed around her shoulder, she flinched and jerked away from him. Now anger churned in his guts. What had happened to her those long weeks she’d been missing?
How badly had she been abused?
She had a bruise on her shoulder, which was bare. Her pale blue dress had thin spaghetti straps. If she’d gotten that injury in captivity, the bruise should have faded by now. Why did it look so fresh and painful?
She blinked and stared up at him, the dread still in her pale blue eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
Clutching her son tightly against her with one arm—maybe too tightly, if Dane could guess from how hard he was crying—she gestured with her other hand at the window. “Someone was there, trying to get in.”
He glanced at the window. Sunlight glinted off the glass. “Nobody’s there.”
“There was,” she insisted, her voice tremulous. With fear or doubt?
He glanced around the room, at the teenage girls who struggled to comfort crying babies and toddlers. One of the girls shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“There was a shadow,” the other babysitter, the one with the black hair, said. “I’m not sure...”
If it was human, or just a shadow...
Emilia reached out now and clasped Dane’s arm. His skin tingled beneath her fingers. “There was someone there trying to open the window.”
He nodded. “I’ll check it out.” But she held tightly to his arm, so he couldn’t pull away and escape her and all those crying children.
If he didn’t leave soon, he might do something stupid...like reach for her again, like try to hold her like he had tried the night she’d awoken in the hospital, screaming. That had been a mistake on his part. He wasn’t made for comforting—women or kids. He couldn’t give what he’d never received.
He glanced down at her hand on his arm, and she jerked it away as if embarrassed that she’d been holding on to him. As he passed her, she murmured, “Thank you.”
He wasn’t certain if there was really anything to check out. But when he headed outside, he found other bodyguards walking the grounds. His invitation really had been an assignment. Security was high at this wedding.
High enough?
Why would someone have been trying to get inside the nursery? Or had they just been looking for an open window to get inside the church undetected?
He walked around the white brick building to the back and found the window to the nursery. The woodchips beneath it had been disturbed, some brushed aside enough that he could make out a footprint.
He leaned down and peered into the window, and his gaze met Emilia’s pale blue one through the glass. He nodded. And it was as if her shoulders slumped with relief when she should have been tensing with fear.
What the hell was going on with her?
Lars had been right to worry about her. Dane had thought that her brother had just become overly protective of her after the abduction. But maybe Lars wasn’t being protective enough. She had that bruise on her shoulder, marring the pale silk of her skin.
“What are you doing?” Jordan “Manny” Mannes, the dark-haired bodyguard, joined Dane near the window. “I already checked that window. It’s secure.”
“It was you?”
“Yeah, I’m a perimeter guard,” Manny said. “I thought you were interior.”
Dane nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
He glanced back at the window. “Someone saw you,” he said. “And thought you were trying to get in, not making sure that no one else could.”
After what she’d been through, it was no surprise that Emilia had suspected the worst. But was that because of her recent past or her present?
Manny leaned down and looked in the window, too. “Ah, I didn’t even realize anyone was in there. Is that Lars’s little sister?”
He said it like she was a child. But she wasn’t a child. She was twenty-something and already a mother. She and her son were a ready-made family.
Dane waited for the shudder, but fear didn’t grip him like it usually did whenever he thought of family. His experience with family had been nearly as bad as some of his missions with the Marines.
Where was that shudder? He needed the fear. It was all that had kept him alive during his deployments. Being afraid had kept him alert, had made him cautious.
He had never needed to be more cautious than now, when Lars had asked him to stick close to Emilia. He suspected he needed to be more afraid of the beautiful blonde than any enemy he had ever faced.
* * *
While his friend continued to lean over and stare into that window at Lars’s sister, Manny straightened up. No. He hadn’t missed her. If she had been inside the room earlier, he would have noticed her. Sure, she was off limits because she was Lars’s sister. That didn’t mean he would’ve failed to spot her, gorgeous that she was.
“No, man, I’m sure there was nobody in there when I checked that window earlier,” Manny said. “The room was empty.”
Dane shook his head. “How is that possible? She saw you just a few minutes ago and those kids were already inside the nursery then.”
Manny tensed, every one of his bodyguard instincts at attention. “I checked that window over an hour ago when I first arrived at the chapel.”
Dane cursed. “Did you see anyone hanging around this side of the chapel?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “Hell, no. I would have investigated if I had. It’s just been me and Cole patrolling the grounds with a few of the guards from Parker’s agency.”
Each of the Payne brothers had their own franchise of the security business now. Parker, a former vice cop, had all former police officers on his team. Cooper’s unit consisted of former Marines like himself, with the exception of his sister, Nikki, who was as badass as any Marine that Manny had ever known. Then Logan, the brother who’d started the security business, had all family members working for him. But that family was all inside the church for the wedding of the Payne matriarch.
A wedding that couldn’t be interrupted. Manny cursed now. “I hope like hell we didn’t miss someone getting inside who shouldn’t be in there.”
He wasn’t sure if Dane heard him. His friend was still staring through that window, at Lars’s sister. Friends’ sisters were off limits to Manny, but Lars had broken that bro rule when he’d fallen for Cooper’s sister.
Dane, though?
He was the last one Manny would have thought would break a bro rule. Or fall for anyone...
He was a bigger commitment-phobe than Manny and that was saying something. No. Something else about the blonde beauty had to be bothering Dane.
“If someone’s trying to get inside the church, it’s about the groom or bride, right?” Manny asked.
He had heard the story about the wedding party that had been taken hostage in the chapel, and that this groom had nearly died that day. Of course all of the hostage takers had died. None of them had survived to storm the church again.
That reason alone would keep anyone else from crashing this wedding. They wouldn’t survive if they tried to break in now, not with so many Paynes and other bodyguards present.
Dane must have come to that same conclusion because he shook his head and murmured, “No, if someone’s trying to get into the church, I think it has something to do with someone else....”
With Emilia Ecklund?
But why?
She’d already been abducted and held hostage for weeks. And the man responsible for that was dead. Who could be after her now?
Chapter 3 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
Dane Sutton was staring at her through the glass, like she had begun to stare at herself in the mirror the past few days. With concern.
With fear.
She couldn’t look into his dark eyes anymore, but it was hard to look away from him, hard not to look at him. He was so big. So handsome...
His features were chiseled. His dark hair almost shorter than the standard military brush cut. He wasn’t on active duty anymore, but he still looked like a Marine. Still no-nonsense. To the point. That was why she hadn’t been able to look at him anymore and see the doubts she already felt.
Was she losing her mind? Obviously it had only been the other bodyguard checking the window earlier. Nobody was after her baby.
She forced herself to release him and hand him back to one of the irritated babysitters. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I saw the man.”
The girl nodded and took Blue from her.
Emilia had to get back to the wedding. But she couldn’t leave the nursery with the commotion she’d caused. Fortunately Penny—who thought of everything—had had the room soundproofed. Emilia must have left the door ajar when she’d rushed inside, or Dane wouldn’t have heard her scream.
While his assurance to check things out had momentarily made her feel better, now she wished he hadn’t heard her. He was certain to tell Lars how paranoid she was. And her brother already stared at her as if she was so fragile that she would shatter at any minute.
But she was stronger than that. She was capable. She didn’t want Lars or Penny to think otherwise. So to quiet the startled nursery, she began to sing. She sang a popular kids’ song from a musical she’d done in school.
The teenage girls looked more astonished now than they had when she’d screamed. The kids must have been equally surprised, for they’d all fallen silent with awe now.
Emilia smiled and headed toward the door. But then she saw that Dane had returned and was leaning against the jamb. He’d heard at least some of the song.
Heat rushed to her face, and she hurried past him. “I need to check on things now,” she murmured. “Make sure the ceremony is going well.”
Hopefully she hadn’t missed it. She wanted to see Penny get her happily-ever-after. The woman had planned so many for other brides that she deserved the happiest ever-after for herself.
Dane kept pace beside her in the hall. He was so big, so tall and broad and heavily muscled, and the hallway was narrow enough, that his arm brushed against hers. Once their hips even bumped. She felt an arc of awareness sizzle between them, which was ridiculous. As ridiculous as she had been to scream moments ago.
“Don’t you want to know what I found out?” he asked.
She sighed. “It was your friend,” she said. “The other one I saw standing outside with you. He must have been who I saw. He must have been checking the window.” She hadn’t been able to hear every word they’d spoken but enough, with their hand gestures, to get the gist. “I overreacted.”
“After what you’ve been through, that’s understandable,” he said.
She didn’t want his pity, didn’t want him looking at her the way Lars did. She wasn’t fragile or weak. She wasn’t crazy, either. “Penny had said she had a strange feeling.”
Dane cocked his head. “What?”
“You haven’t heard about Penny Payne’s premonitions?” she asked with shock.
He shook his head.
“She always knows when something bad is about to happen.”
“If she has that feeling today, maybe she shouldn’t be getting married.”
“This feeling wasn’t about her,” she said. The look on her boss’s beautiful face had been about Emilia. Emilia knew that.
Her own instinct was already warning her, so it was especially unnerving.
“No wonder you’re a little edgy,” Dane said.
A little was an understatement. She felt as if she might never sleep again, not without hearing that crying.
“It’s an important day,” she said. “I need to make sure everything goes well.” And she’d nearly blown that by screaming down the church.
Dane must have been the only one outside the nursery who’d heard her, otherwise her brother would have been there. Dane looked away from her now, and she saw that his hand was near his tuxedo jacket, as if he were about to reach for his weapon.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You were right,” he said. “Manny did check the window. But it was when he first got here.”
She tensed now. “And when was that?”
“Over an hour ago.”
“So there was someone there when I thought I saw someone?”
He stared at her as if wondering if he could believe her, if he could believe that she had really seen anything at all. She had as many doubts as he had. But she stopped and turned back toward the nursery.
He caught her arm. “You had things to check on,” he reminded her. “The ceremony...”
She shook her head. “Nothing is more important than my son.” She would never let him down again. She couldn’t risk losing him. “I need to watch over him.” Or get him the hell away from the church.
But were they any safer at home?
Were they safe anywhere?
“Manny is watching him,” Dane assured her. “I told him to stay right outside that window. Nothing will happen to Blue.”
She turned back toward him. “You know my son’s nickname?”
He nodded. “I know that. I don’t know his real name.”
“Lars.”
“Good thing he has a nickname.”
Since she’d always believed he and her brother were such great friends, she glanced at him in surprise at the snarky remark, but then she realized he was kidding. His face was serious, though. He really had the emotionless expression of a soldier. Or a bodyguard...
This job was perfect for him. But she didn’t need a bodyguard. Or did she?
Was everything that was happening just in her head?
She would have to figure out that later. Right now she had a wedding to oversee. She hurried down the hall and up the stairs.
Dane stayed at her side, just like a bodyguard. “It wasn’t that bad a joke, was it?” he asked.
Her lips curved into a slight smile. “Lars wrote about you during boot camp and your deployments...” So much that she felt as if she knew him already—or at least as much as Lars knew him—which by her brother’s own admission wasn’t totally.
Dane’s an enigma, he’d written once. I trust him with my life. But I never know exactly what he’s thinking or feeling. Or if he feels anything at all...
She understood that now.
“I really need to make sure everything’s okay with the wedding.” But when she climbed the stairs to the foyer, she found Nikki Payne looking for her.
“There you are,” the petite brunette said. Her beautiful face was tense with anxiety.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Why hasn’t the ceremony started?” She knew Penny Payne hadn’t changed her mind and that her groom would have no second thoughts about marrying such an amazing woman, either.
“We’re not ready,” Nikki said.
Emilia had thought everything was set to go. That she’d had everything in place. The minister. The photographer. The caterer.
Every detail.
Then she noticed the eerie silence but for the slight murmur of whispering voices, and she questioned, “Why hasn’t the music started?” She had helped the musicians set up.
“The singer,” Nikki said. “She hasn’t showed up. We have the guitar players and pianist but no singer.”
A big hand nudged Emilia forward. “Yes, you do. She can sing.” She turned to Dane and shook her head.
It was one thing to sing to a nursery of children screaming their heads off. It was another to sing in front of a crowded church of quiet adults.
“You can sing?” Nikki asked, her brown eyes brightening with hope.
She shook her head again.
“I just heard her,” Dane said. “She’s amazing.”
Her pulse quickened, and her heart warmed with pleasure that he’d thought so. But she shook her head again as nerves fluttered in her stomach. She wasn’t certain if she was nervous about singing. Or about Dane standing so close to her.
Hell, maybe singing was one way to get him to leave her side.
“Would you do it for Mom?” Nikki implored her. “She thinks the world of you. And she deserves this day to be incredibly special.”
“My singing might hurt that,” Emilia warned her. But then she sighed. She already knew she couldn’t say no to Nikki. Lars’s girlfriend was the only one who hadn’t given her up for dead. “What song?”
She had expected a classic befitting Penny Payne. But her daughter named a newer pop song. It was about loving someone like you might lose them. She shivered. Penny had nearly lost her groom before he’d even been able to ask her on their first date. He’d wound up proposing instead. Emilia couldn’t imagine a love like that, one where they had fallen so quickly for each other and had been so confident that it was the real thing.
But then Lars and Nikki had that same kind of love—that soul-deep connection. She glanced back at Dane, and something shifted in her chest. But his handsome face remained expressionless.
Unfeeling.
She doubted she would be lucky enough to find a love like Penny and Woodrow’s or Lars and Nikki’s for herself. No. She wasn’t going to love a man like she was going to lose him. She would love her son like that—because she knew what it felt like—because she had already lost him once.
She couldn’t lose him again.
If not one of the bodyguards, who had been outside the nursery window and why? Was someone trying to take her son? Or her?
* * *
She wasn’t singing to him. She sang instead to the bride and groom. But her surprisingly sexy voice enveloped and overwhelmed Dane. His heart twisted in a tight fist of anxiety. Maybe it was her anxiety that he felt. Since she’d disappeared and Lars had given him that photo, Dane had had an almost eerie connection to her.
Despite what she’d said, he didn’t think she was nervous about singing. Her voice was too clear, too strong—and so compelling that all the guests were riveted, staring up at her in awe. Dane couldn’t take his gaze from her.
And maybe that was why he saw the fear he’d heard when she’d screamed in the nursery. Was it just post-traumatic stress disorder like her brother thought? But that bruise wasn’t PTSD. Something had happened. She’d been hurt again.
Recently.
Heat rushed through him, his temper heating his blood and his skin. He wanted to hurt whoever had hurt her. First he had to find out who that was. Somebody slid into the church pew next to him and bumped his shoulder. Mentally cursing himself for not being aware of the person approaching, he reached for his weapon.
“Hey,” Lars whispered. “You don’t need that.”
He wasn’t so sure. Who the hell had Emilia seen outside the nursery window?
His friend emitted a soft gasp. “I forgot how she sings...”
“...like an angel,” Dane murmured.
Lars glanced at him, his pale blue eyes narrowed.
A bead of sweat trickled down Dane’s back, beneath his tuxedo jacket. The monkey suit was why he was so damn hot—because it wasn’t like he was scared of his best friend. After nearly losing her once, Lars was bound to protect Emilia using whatever means necessary. Even murder...
Dane wouldn’t hurt her. He wanted to make sure she didn’t get hurt. Again.
Dane asked, “What happened to her shoulder?”
His brow furrowing, Lars glanced at him again then back at Emilia, who effortlessly held the last note of the song. Had her brother not noticed the bruise? But then, in a whisper, Lars replied, “She hit it on the doorjamb when Blue’s crying woke her up.”
That explained it, if Emilia had told her brother the truth. The tension clutching Dane’s guts didn’t ease at all. He suspected Emilia had left something out. Or maybe he was just thinking of all the abused women who claimed walking into doors had caused their bruises.
He needed to find out what was really going on with Emilia. Thinking of that—of sticking close enough to learn the truth and protect her—Dane’s tension increased. This might prove the most dangerous mission he’d ever had.
* * *
Nikki Payne had spent most of her adult life dodging bouquets. This time, while the bride prepared to throw her flowers, Nikki was not hiding in the bathroom. She was out on the dance floor with the other single women. And as the brightly colored bundle of tiger lilies and calla lilies catapulted through the air, Nikki didn’t duck behind any of those shrieking women. Nor did she keep her hands linked behind her back as she had every other time she’d been forced onto the dance floor.
Nobody had coerced her to join the others. Even as the maid of honor, she wouldn’t have had to participate in this tradition. But she wanted to catch these flowers. So she lifted her hands in the air and actually elbowed aside some of those screaming single women to snag this bouquet from the air. Holding the flowers aloft, she let out a squeal of her own—of victory.
The bride, Nikki’s mother, had tossed the bouquet over her shoulder. Now Penny turned fully around, and when she saw who’d caught her flowers, her eyes—the same brown as Nikki’s—widened in shock. She wasn’t the only one staring mutely at Nikki. Her brothers and sisters-in-law all gaped, their eyes and mouths wide.
Only Lars didn’t look shocked. He appeared delighted, his sexy lips curving into a grin while his pale blue eyes sparkled. She loved him—so much. More than she’d thought it possible to love anyone.
She’d fallen for him when he’d been at his worst, desperate and guilt-ridden over the disappearance of his sister. He’d blamed himself for not protecting her even though he’d been deployed in a war zone at the time Emilia had gone missing. His sense of responsibility and honor had impressed her so much that Nikki had been unable to resist him.
And she couldn’t resist him now as he dropped to one knee in the middle of the dance floor in front of her. Before he even opened his mouth, Nikki threw her arms around his neck. On his knees he was nearly her height.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes!”
“I don’t believe it,” a deep voice, belonging to one of her brothers no doubt, murmured. “I thought she’d be running the other way from that bouquet.”
“And she’s so impatient to say yes, she didn’t even wait for him to propose,” another brother chimed in.
Heat rushed to her face and she pulled back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed—”
Lars pressed his fingers over her lips. “It’s not like I’m down here looking for a missing contact,” he assured her. “I’m on my knees because I thought you were going to make me beg you to marry me.”
“And you were prepared to beg?” she asked in amazement. As well as having an overblown sense of responsibility and honor, he also had a lot of pride. Sometimes too much. But it was just another thing she loved about him.
He nodded. “I would do whatever it takes to convince you to be my wife, Nikki. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
“You already make me happy,” she assured him.
He tensed for a moment. Maybe he’d forgotten that she’d already said yes and thought she was going back to her earlier anti-marriage stance. She hadn’t ever really been anti-marriage, though. She had been anti–getting hurt.
But just as she loved Lars, she trusted him more than she’d ever thought it possible for her to trust anyone. He wasn’t going to hurt her.
“So you don’t have to do anything to convince me to marry you. I’m ready,” she said. And that was something she’d thought she would never say. She was ready to get married. Ready to be a bride and, more important, a wife.
His pale eyes glittered as if with a sheen of tears. She blinked furiously as tears of her own stung her eyes and tickled her nose. She would not cry, not in front of her brothers. Later, when she laid her head on Lars’s mammoth chest, she would soak his skin with her happy tears. But she was too proud to give in to them now...until Lars popped open the velvet case and revealed the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Stacy Kozminski-Payne must have made it. Logan’s wife was so damn talented. As Nikki stared at the square diamond and twisted gold band on which it was mounted, a tear spilled over and trailed down her cheek—until Lars brushed it away.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “I don’t want to make you cry.”
“Happy tears,” she assured him. She suspected that was all she would cry once he became her husband.
“Good,” he murmured. “Then I’m already doing my job.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” her brother Cooper, who was also their boss, called out. But he was over being mad at Lars for breaking the bro rule of not going after another friend’s sister. She hoped.
Penny tapped her youngest son’s shoulder and shushed him. “Don’t interrupt.”
“They interrupted your wedding,” Cooper pointed out.
“Lars got my permission,” Penny haughtily informed him.
In the past, Nikki would have been annoyed over the chauvinistic tradition of asking the parents for permission before asking the woman. But she understood that wasn’t what Lars had done. He’d been asking permission to propose at Penny’s wedding.
Of course, her mother hadn’t hesitated to say yes and share her special day and spotlight with them. She had always been too selfless. But Nikki didn’t mind being selfish right now—not as Lars slid that beautiful ring on her finger. Then he stood and swung her up in his arms before lowering his head to kiss her.
Passion and love overwhelmed her, and more tears leaked from beneath her closed lids. Those tears nearly turned to frustration when the kiss ended way too soon as well-wishers rushed the dance floor. Guys slapped Lars’s back. Maybe her brothers slapped a little too hard. But Lars was bigger than all of them. The grin never slipped from his face so Nikki could tell he felt no pain.
Everyone hugged Nikki, who usually would have squirmed away from all the show of emotion. She wasn’t a hugger. But she was too happy to mind the affection she was being showered with. Penny hugged her tightly.
“You really didn’t mind him proposing here?” Nikki asked. She wouldn’t have infringed on her mother’s special day for anything.
Penny shook her head. “Nothing could have made this day more perfect for me.”
Nikki snorted. “Of course not. You’ve wanted me to get married since the day I was born,” she accused her mother.
Penny shook her head again. “No. I wanted you to find the man worthy of your love, the man who wouldn’t betray your trust—who would cherish you forever. And, in Lars, you’ve found that man.”
“Yes, I have,” Nikki wholeheartedly agreed. Her fiancé was amazing. And soon he would be her husband.
Penny’s new husband stepped forward and pulled Nikki into an embrace, as well. She had always respected the former FBI chief, but now she loved him, as well. He was going to be as wonderful a stepfather as he would be in his new position as chief of the River City Police Department.
“Do you want me to threaten him?” Woodrow Lynch asked. “Make sure he never hurts you?”
“He won’t.”
“He won’t,” Emilia promised as she stepped forward for her hug. “My brother loves you so much.” Tears streamed down the blonde’s face, washing away the makeup she’d used to disguise her dark circles.
Lars was already worried about his sister. And Nikki knew he wasn’t just being overprotective. She was worried, too. And it wasn’t just because of the dark circles. Since the young woman had an infant, she wasn’t bound to get much sleep.
Nikki had other concerns, as well. The singer not showing up hadn’t been the only thing to go wrong with the wedding. There had been countless other things Emilia had screwed up or, like the singer, that she’d canceled. As maid of honor and the daughter of the consummate wedding planner, Nikki had stepped in to fix those mistakes.
But why had Emilia made them? She didn’t even seem aware that she had. What else was on her mind?
Was it just the ordeal she’d been through?
Or was something else going on?
Nikki had been reluctant to talk to Lars about it; she didn’t want to worry him any more than he already was. But she noticed someone else carefully watching the blonde. And she suspected she and Lars weren’t the only ones concerned about Emilia.
Dane Sutton was anxious, as well.
What the hell was going on with Emilia?
Chapter 4 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
How could she have messed up so badly? Emilia had been certain that she’d had everything under control. But she’d overheard the caterer and bartenders talking to Nikki about how Emilia had canceled their services just like she’d canceled the singer.
It wasn’t true. But why would they all lie?
She looked at her cell phone now, scrolling through her call log. She had made calls at strange times. In the middle of the night, which was when the caterer and bartenders and the singer claimed she’d called and left voice mails canceling their services.
If Penny heard about any of it...
Emilia would lose her job.
At the moment, as she stared down at that phone log, she was more worried about losing her mind. She didn’t remember making those calls. And she couldn’t have done them in her sleep since she hadn’t been sleeping. She’d been lying awake every night, listening to that crying that wasn’t Blue’s. Whose crying did she hear? Why was it haunting her?
She could hear it now...as she lay in her bed. Like always, she wasn’t sleeping. Adrenaline from the wedding hummed through her veins yet. Despite all her sleepless hours, she wasn’t tired. So much had happened tonight. Penny and Woodrow had gotten married, and the ceremony had been beautiful—apparently no thanks to Emilia. And then Lars and Nikki had gotten engaged. She’d known it was coming, but still it had taken her by surprise. It was all happening so quickly. Everyone was moving on with their lives.
Everyone but her. She couldn’t get beyond the past, beyond what had happened to her all those weeks she’d been held captive without her son. Maybe that crying she heard was her own.
She felt like crying now, as her world began to crumble around her. If she lost her job...
How would she support herself and her son?
If everyone considered her an incompetent wedding planner, would they also consider her incompetent as a mother?
Was she?
She shivered as she allowed the thought to cross her mind. A chill passed through her body along with it. No. She would do anything for her son—even get help. Most of her life she’d turned to her brother when she’d needed help, except for when she’d discovered she was pregnant. He’d been deployed then and unavailable. While he was in the country now, he was equally unavailable.
Of course if she called him, he would rush immediately to her aid. But she couldn’t do that to him. He’d already worried about her enough. For weeks he’d thought she was dead. She didn’t want him to worry about her ever again. So to whom could she turn?
Not Nikki. She couldn’t expect or ask the newly engaged woman to keep a secret from her fiancé. She would have asked her boss, but Penny was gone now for a long honeymoon.
Penny had trusted Emilia to keep the business running while she was gone. She probably shouldn’t have done that. Undoubtedly she wouldn’t have, if Nikki had shared with her how much the maid of honor had had to step in to make sure the wedding ceremony ran smoothly.
Emilia glanced down at her phone again, but she couldn’t see the screen through the tears blurring her vision. She wasn’t crying because she was sad or scared, though. She was crying because she was mad. There was no way she would have called and canceled those wedding services.
Sure, the numbers were on her phone. She couldn’t see them now—through her tears—but she had seen them. Just because her phone had been used didn’t mean she had used it, though. Someone else must have.
But how?
How had they used her phone in the middle of the night? She would have seen them—would have known. Unless...
She heard a noise, one she barely heard over the sound of the crying. But it was there—the telltale creak of a door opening. Someone was breaking into the house. Like they had broken in before?
* * *
Nightmares?
What the hell had Lars been talking about? Dane didn’t have nightmares. Sure, sometimes he woke up in a cold sweat with his heart pounding so hard it felt like his ribs might break.
But he was never able to remember what he’d been dreaming about, or if he’d been dreaming at all. He’d probably just been reliving some of those missions. Or maybe even things that had happened before that.
Like identifying his adoptive parents’ bodies in the morgue after the terrible car accident that had ended their lives. He’d barely been eighteen at the time.
He hadn’t thought about that in years, until that day he’d gone to the morgue to identify Emilia Ecklund’s body.
But it hadn’t been Emilia’s. Just as he had that night, he expelled another ragged breath of relief that it hadn’t been her. He had been relieved for Lars. His friend had already been in agony worrying about her. If he’d lost her forever...
Lars would have never forgiven himself.
But Dane had also been relieved for himself. He’d wanted to meet the young woman whose photo he’d been using as the screen saver on his cell phone. Of course he’d only been doing that so he would recognize the person for whom he’d been looking. Once she’d been found, he’d deleted it...
As his screen saver.
And yet he hadn’t been able to force himself to send her photo to his recycle folder. He still had it on his phone—in its photo album.
Even though he’d seen her that day, looking beautiful in that pale blue dress that matched her eyes, he needed to see her again. So he reached out in the darkness, fumbling around for the cell sitting on the crate next to his king-size bed. Usually he loved having the extra space to sprawl out, like he hadn’t been able to sprawl out all those months spent sleeping on cots. If they were lucky, they’d had cots. Sometimes they’d just had a hard floor or dirt.
Tonight his bed felt especially empty. He felt alone like he hadn’t since he was kid. But he knew now that it was better to be alone like he’d been back then—with nobody to worry about, nobody to care about...
He’d already spent too much time worrying about Emilia Ecklund. Now he was worried again, especially after the newly engaged Nikki Payne had caught him alone.
Her concern furrowing her usually smooth forehead, she’d said, “Something’s going on with Emilia.”
“I know,” Dane had readily agreed. “Lars is worried, too.”
“Should we be worried?” she’d asked.
He’d shrugged then because he wasn’t certain. Maybe she hadn’t seen anything outside that window. Maybe she’d only banged into that doorframe like she’d told her brother because it had been dark and she’d been tired.
Nikki had told him about the other things—about her slipping up on her job—a job in which she had seemed to be taking pride. He doubted she would have messed that up purposely.
What the hell was going on with her?
He’d followed her when she’d left the chapel. He’d made certain she’d gotten safely inside her house with her son. But then he’d forced himself to drive away. She was fine.
Wasn’t she?
He needed to see that picture. Not that seeing her smiling face would make him feel any better. It usually made him feel worse, made his pulse quicken and his heart flip. But he didn’t pull his hand away; he kept reaching for his phone. His fingers skimmed over cold metal, his gun. He always had it within reach, which had saved his life more than once.
That weapon wouldn’t save him from Emilia, though. But how dangerous could she be?
She was his friend’s sister. And unlike Lars, that meant something to Dane. That meant she was off limits.
And she had a baby.
Dane had no intention of being a father to anyone. He wouldn’t make the mistake his adoptive father had. He wouldn’t take on a responsibility he really didn’t want. He wouldn’t do to a kid what had been done to him.
No. Emilia Ecklund was no danger to him. But was she in danger?
The crate began to vibrate beneath his phone, and he finally found it. His screen lit up with the photo he had of her—because she was calling him. Lars had put her number in Dane’s phone—just like he’d put his in her phone—in case she ever needed help and Lars wasn’t available.
Feeling like he’d been sucker punched, he expelled a gasp of air. Then he pushed the button. “Hello?”
“Dane?” she asked in a raspy whisper.
A chill raced down his spine. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I—I think someone’s in the house,” she whispered, her voice cracking with fear. “I heard the door open...”
He shivered again but kicked off the sheet that had tangled around his body. “I’m on my way,” he promised. “Stay on the phone with me.”
But the line clicked. Maybe she’d just been afraid that the intruder would hear her. Or maybe the intruder had already found her.
When he arrived at her house, Dane couldn’t find her. Not that many minutes had passed since she’d called, but she was gone.
Maybe someone had dragged her through the front door that stood open. Or maybe she was hiding somewhere.
He hoped like hell she was hiding.
“Emilia...” he called out softly, not wanting to alert her intruder to his presence. But was his voice too low for her to hear him?
Because she did not answer.
He hoped that was only because she hadn’t heard him. But as he stepped inside the house, a strange sensation passed through him. Maybe he was having one of Penny Payne’s premonitions.
Because instinct warned him something bad had happened or was about to happen.
To him...
Emilia might not have heard him. But perhaps her intruder had.
* * *
For the second time that day, Penny stared at her reflection in a mirror. The first time she’d wanted to look beautiful. This time she wanted to look sexy.
A breeze fluttered through the white curtains, making them billow around the window. It carried the scent of hibiscus and the sea. While Woodrow had left it to her to plan their wedding, he’d taken charge of the honeymoon.
He’d found a beautiful beach house on a nearly deserted island. There were some other inhabitants, but she hadn’t noticed them. She wasn’t aware of anyone but her handsome groom. He was so tall. So fit. With short graying hair and kind, blue eyes. Not a bright blue like the Paynes’, but a deep, soulful blue.
Woodrow had stepped outside for a few minutes. To give her time to get ready for their wedding night... But probably also to make a call. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from checking in with Nicholas Payne, from making sure his friend and former employee was managing the River City Police Department in the new chief’s absence.
Penny had no desire to make calls. She had no desire for anyone but Woodrow. In the mirror, she could see how her face was flushed, her eyes bright.
Maybe that was embarrassment, though. She wore white now, a thin silk gown that skimmed her curves while leaving her shoulders bare. Would Woodrow find it sexy or ridiculous?
Because she knew her groom well, she smiled. She had no worries about how he would react when he saw her. But she was gripped by a sudden fear that chilled her skin despite that warm breeze. As she watched her reflection in the mirror, all the color drained from her face.
The door opened, but she didn’t tense. She knew she wasn’t the one in danger.
“Damn,” a deep male voice remarked as a whistle hissed out with his breath. “I am a lucky man.”
She was the lucky one.
He stepped closer—probably close enough to see her face—because then he dropped to his knees next to the chair at the vanity table.
“What is it?” Woodrow asked. “Who’s in danger?” His handsome face had turned pale, as well. “One of our kids?”
They weren’t his kids or her kids. They were theirs, even the ones who weren’t related at all to either of them. The orphans, the agents, the bodyguards...
They both loved and worried about them all.
She reached out and gripped his hand, and their matching wedding bands glinted in the light from the vanity table. She hadn’t wanted diamonds, just simple gold. Stacy had designed a beautiful infinity pattern in yellow gold to represent their endless love.
But everything wasn’t endless. Penny knew that too well.
“Who?” Woodrow asked again anxiously.
“Emilia...”
It was more than a feeling that she was in danger, though. It was a feeling that something bad had already happened. That no matter who they called to rescue her, that person would be too late to save her.
That person might be in danger, too—grave danger.
Chapter 5 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
Emilia had made a dangerous mistake. Instead of trying to get outside when she’d heard the front door open, she had grabbed Blue and headed up to the attic. This meant that she was trapped. She had no way out except past the intruder.
Then she’d called Dane, which had probably been another misstep. What if the intruder had heard her?
What if he knew where she was hiding now?
Fortunately her son was quiet, sleeping soundly in her trembling arms. He hadn’t given away their presence.
But she might have.
Why had she called Dane?
Sure, she hadn’t wanted to interrupt Nikki and Lars on the night they had just gotten engaged.
But why Dane?
She had the numbers of all Lars’s friends. He’d given her Cooper Payne’s before he’d left for his last deployment. Cooper hadn’t re-enlisted like the rest of his unit. He’d been home and able to help her.
If only she’d gone to Cooper instead of that sleazy lawyer.
She couldn’t change the past, though. And Lars had made certain she had more than one man to call for help now. He’d given her the numbers of all his friends.
So why had she called only one man? Why had she trusted Dane, a man his own best friend had admitted he didn’t really know?
Sure, he’d claimed he was on his way. But where was he coming from? How far away was he?
And why hadn’t she just called 911?
Because she hadn’t wanted it on record if there was no intruder—if that creak had only been in her head—like the crying.
What if she was losing her mind?
Why would she trust Dane Sutton to keep her secret? She couldn’t even trust that he was really coming. There hadn’t been just that one creak. After she’d heard the door open, she’d heard other noises—footsteps on the stairs, heading up to the second floor, to her bedroom and Blue’s.
Was someone after her son?
She fumbled around in the darkness of the attic space, trying to find the cell phone she’d dropped. She hadn’t imagined all that, the creak of the door and on the steps. She needed to call the police. She couldn’t wait for Dane any longer.
But then she noticed the silence. It was eerily quiet. There were no sounds, not from the house or anything outside. Usually one of the branches of the trees hanging over the house brushed across the roof. But not now. Not even a cricket chirped.
Had she imagined it all? Was there no one inside? Of course that didn’t mean that no one had been inside, just that he’d left. Maybe he hadn’t been looking for Blue or her at all. Maybe he’d only been searching for her phone to make more of the late-night calls.
She expelled a shaky breath of relief. She and her son were alone. She could bring him downstairs and settle him back in his bed. But then a door creaked—the attic door. As it opened, a light flashed, the beam shining straight into her eyes.
Nearly blinded, she squinted and tried to peer around the beam. A hulking shadow loomed behind the light. But that wasn’t what frightened her the most; it was the fact that the flashlight from which that beam came wasn’t held in a hand. It was mounted to the barrel of a gun that was pointed directly at her.
A scream tore from her throat.
“Hey, hey!” a deep voice shouted. And the beam shifted, shining on the chiseled features of the man who held the gun. “It’s me,” he said. “Dane.”
Instead of slowing, her heart raced faster. She could feel Blue’s heart beating fast, too, as he cried. Her scream had startled him. He wasn’t easily soothed. It was hard to comfort her son when she was still so scared.
Her hand trembled as she ran it up and down his back. “It’s okay...” But she wasn’t sure about that.
Something snapped, then light from an overhead bulb illuminated the rafters and wood of the unfinished attic space. “Are you really okay?” Dane asked as he holstered his weapon. “You’re shaking.”
As if afraid that she might drop her son, he reached out and took the crying child from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Lars had remarked more than once that Dane Sutton couldn’t stand kids. Why was he cradling hers so gently in those huge hands of his?
“You called me, remember?” Dane asked. “You said someone had broken into your house...” His voice trailed off and he stared at her oddly.
“What?” she asked. “Didn’t you see anyone?”
He shook his head. “No. And the door jamb wasn’t broken.”
“No. They didn’t break in,” she murmured. “I just heard the door open.”
He kept staring at her. She’d known his eyes were brown but she saw now, with the light glinting in them, that they were more golden than dark. “You didn’t lock it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. No. Of course it was locked. I made sure that it was.”
Hadn’t she?
She reached out for her son, but her hands were still shaking. Not with fear now but with nerves.
His intense stare unnerved her.
“You can give him back to me,” she said.
Blue had stopped crying, practically the moment Dane had taken him away from her. And he stared, too, up at the man holding him. His pale eyes were wide with awe. He should have been used to big men with his uncle being nearly the size of a giant. But maybe it wasn’t Dane’s size that awed him. It was his aura.
She felt it, too. She’d felt it the very first time she’d met him. He was a man of power and control. A man who let little get to him or get in his way.
“I have him,” he said, as if he didn’t trust her with her own son. He turned and headed toward the stairs. “These steps are steep and narrow,” he said.
“I know.” She’d climbed them in such haste and fear that she’d nearly tripped up every one of them. She’d been carrying her sleeping son, so she’d been careful with him. “I brought Blue up here and never woke him,” she said.
Dane ignored her and easily descended the narrow stairs. For such a big man, he moved silently, almost gracefully. He wasn’t the one she’d heard walking around the house earlier. Heck, she’d thought she was alone when the door had opened, and he’d shone his light and his gun in her face.
“Which room is his?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her answer before carrying her son right into the nursery.
She started to regret calling him. For one, he still didn’t hand her son back to her. He cradled the baby in his palms. But maybe he forgot he held him since he wasn’t looking at the child.
He kept looking at her. And that was the other reason she thought she shouldn’t have called him. He kept staring at her so oddly, his caramel eyes darkening with his intensity.
She shivered and said, “Stop looking at me like that...”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like I’m losing my mind.” Because if he kept looking at her like that, she might start believing that she was. “And I’m not,” she insisted, but her voice cracked on a note that sounded curiously close to hysteria.
Blue tensed and his little face screwed up as if he were about to cry again. But Dane rocked him a little and murmured, “Shhh, little guy, it’s all right.”
Emilia shook her head and said, “It’s not all right. Nothing’s all right.”
Dane’s eyes darkened even more with anger. And finally he put down her son, laying him in his crib. Then he turned toward her and, despite the anger in his eyes, gently brushed his knuckles over the bruise on her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s hurting you?”
She shivered even though his touch heated her skin and her blood. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who’s hurting you?” he asked skeptically, like he thought she was lying to protect someone. And she realized his anger was for that someone. “You don’t know who did this to you?” He skimmed his fingertips gently over her shoulder again.
“No, no,” she said as she realized what he was thinking. “Nobody bruised me.” Again. She’d had her share of them from being held hostage back when she’d actually had the energy to fight. But then she’d gotten so sick.
If Lars and Nikki hadn’t rescued her when they had...
She wouldn’t have survived.
“You really ran into a door?” he asked, his deep voice full of doubt now.
She knew what it sounded like. But she wasn’t involved with anyone. She might never be brave enough to trust anyone ever again.
“Yes,” she said. “But it was because I heard crying—”
“Blue,” he said and glanced down at the quiet baby.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t Blue. I keep hearing this crying...” Tears stung her eyes. “But it’s not Blue.”
“A bad dream?” he asked.
“I’m awake,” she said. “I feel like I’m always awake now.”
A look passed through his eyes. It wasn’t judgment. It was recognition. Did he also have trouble sleeping?
Lars wouldn’t talk about his deployments—didn’t want to share what were probably terrifying details with her. But she could imagine that whatever he and the other members of his unit, like Dane, had seen might haunt them.
What was her excuse?
Sure, she had been through some trauma, but only for weeks. Not months like Dane and her brother had endured. She doubted Dane would be any more willing to talk about their deployments than Lars was.
So she continued, “And even though I’m awake, I keep hearing that crying, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.”
He was staring at her again like he suspected it was all in her head.
“Stop,” she implored him.
He lifted his shoulders. “Stop what?”
“Stop looking at me like that.” Tears stung her eyes. And now she knew where the crying was coming from, as a sob slipped through her lips. She was crying now.
And those big hands that had cradled her son so gently closed around her now, drawing her against his chest. “Shhh,” he murmured, like he had to her son. His strong hands moved over her back now, sliding up and down as if petting her.
She found herself instinctively burrowing closer, seeking his warmth and his strength. He was so big. So strong. She felt safe.
He made her feel other things—things that frightened her even more than the crying and the creak of that door opening.
“It’s okay,” he murmured.
Like she had before, she protested, “No, it’s not.” Her words were muffled in his shirt and the hard muscles of his chest. It wasn’t all right what she was feeling now—in his arms—the tingling, the heat, the desire.
She shivered, and his arms slid around her, holding her closer. Her heart pounded madly.
What she’d been thinking wasn’t all right, either. That she was going crazy. But maybe she was crazy to be attracted to this man, who might be incapable of feeling anything at all according to his best friend.
Or maybe she was just overwhelmed. She hadn’t dared share her problems with anyone yet. She hadn’t wanted to burden them or make them think that she was losing her mind. It was different with Dane. Maybe with her voice muffled and her face pressed against him, she could tell him everything. She could let it all pour out.
Everything that had happened. Finding windows open that she swore she had closed. Hearing that door creak open. Finding those calls in the log on her phone—calls she would have never placed.
And when she finally lifted her face from his chest, his shirt was soaked with her tears. And his face was unreadable. Did he believe her?
Or did he think she was crazy?
* * *
He was crazy. Dane should have left the minute he’d found her and the baby safe in the attic. Then he wouldn’t have held the baby.
Then he wouldn’t have held her.
The night breeze blew through his damp shirt, chilling his skin. But that was good. He’d gotten too hot holding her, too edgy. And her tears...
All those tears had done something to him. He’d felt like he was drowning in them, like he couldn’t get a breath in lungs that had felt so tight, so heavy.
He drew in a deep breath now. That pressure didn’t ease any. He had to go back in that house, had to see her again. The minute she’d finished pouring out her heart and her tears he’d hurried outside. He’d told her that he was going to check everything out and see if anyone had broken into her house.
But he already knew nobody had broken in. The lock of that open door had born no scratches or gouges from someone picking it. The jamb hadn’t been broken. Nobody had forced their way into the house. And yet she swore someone had been inside, that she’d heard footsteps on the stairs and the hardwood floors.
Was it possible?
When he’d followed her home earlier, he’d watched her go inside juggling the baby, a diaper bag and something that had looked more like a suitcase than a purse. A laptop bag? She’d had her hands full. She might not have closed the door tightly behind them.
But he’d sat there long enough, watching her house, that if it hadn’t been shut tightly, it would have blown open then. Wouldn’t it?
And what about the crying she claimed to hear that wasn’t Blue’s?
He tilted his head and listened. Maybe a neighbor had a crying baby. But while Lars had been living in the little bungalow, Dane had met the closest neighbors. An older couple lived on one side and a single man on the other. He doubted either had a baby staying with them. He heard nothing now. Not even the sound of a TV despite the glare of one showing behind a window of the adjacent house.
Shining the flashlight on his gun barrel, he walked around the house. Like at the chapel, he found wood chips disturbed beneath some of the windows. Had someone been standing in them, looking inside? Watching her?
He shivered and it had nothing to do with his damp shirt. His blood was chilled now. He had that eerie sensation he’d had when he’d walked through the open door earlier into a dark house.
The house had been dark then.
But he’d watched her turn on every light before he’d driven away. She had had every light in the house shining as if she’d been checking to make sure no intruders lurked in any of the rooms. And she’d told him earlier, when she’d been sobbing against his chest, that the minute she’d heard the door open, she’d grabbed her son and headed up the attic steps. She’d had no time to turn off all those lights. Unless she’d done it earlier, after he’d left.
Somehow he suspected she hadn’t. As spooked as she was, she probably left the lights on all the time and locked the windows. When he’d walked through the house, he’d noticed that all the windows had been unlatched, like the door had been unlocked.
When she’d turned on those lights earlier, she’d checked the windows. That was one reason he’d driven off because it had looked as though she’d made certain her house was secure. So why would that door have been open and the windows now unlocked?
The short hairs on the nape of his neck rose and the skin between his shoulder blades tingled. He felt like someone was watching him now. When he glanced up, he saw her clearly illuminated in the light behind her that she must have just turned on.
Like she’d turned him on when she’d clung to him, her face buried in his chest. Every word she’d spoken had sent a warm breath whispering across his skin.
He’d never been as aware of another person as he’d been aware of her. He hadn’t just felt her breath on his skin; he’d felt her breathing, as her breasts had pushed against his chest. He’d felt her fear in every fast beat of her heart. And he’d felt her sobs in the moisture of her tears and in the breaks of her sweet voice.
And she’d wondered why he’d kept staring at her. Since finding her in that attic, looking so terrified, he hadn’t been able to look away from her. He was staring again, he knew it. But he couldn’t look away now, either.
With her blond hair glowing and her luminescent skin, she looked like an angel. He’d never seen a more beautiful woman. Or a more frightened one.
One hand was pressed over her mouth, as if holding in a scream. The other was pressed over her breast, probably her heart. She still wore that dress from the wedding, the pale blue that exactly matched the color of her wide eyes. Her thick black lashes fluttered up and down, breaking their locked stare.
He backed up away from the house. Away from her. But he couldn’t leave even though every instinct was warning him to run from her.
Instead he walked around the house and back through that open door. She was holding it, though, and as soon as he stepped through it, she closed it behind him.
“What did you find?” she asked anxiously.
Not his mind. He must have lost that, since he’d ignored his instincts for the first time in his life. What would that cost him?
Only time would tell if it would be his life or something else...
Something he’d never risked before.
“What is it?” she asked, reaching for him. Just her fingers clasped his arm, but it felt like she had reached inside him.
He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her what was really bothering him: her. Not when he was the one she’d called.
“Why?” he asked.
Her eyes glistened with the threat of more tears. “Why? I have no idea. I don’t know why someone would break into the house. Why they would use my phone to make those calls...” She blinked furiously. “Why they would play that...crying...”
Was that what it was? A recording?
“Nobody broke in,” he told her. “None of the locks was tampered with.”
“But I heard the door open.”
“It must not have been locked.”
“I locked it,” she said. And her voice was sharp now, decisive.
“You had your hands full,” he said, “with the baby, his bag, yours...”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know that?”
He shrugged off his slip. “Just assumed.”
“How?” she asked. “You don’t have a baby.”
“No, I don’t.” And he had no intention of ever having one. With anyone.
“Then how?”
He sighed as he acknowledged that he was busted. “I followed you home from the chapel.”
Her mouth opened on a soft gasp of shock.
So he hurriedly explained, “I’m not stalking you. I promised your brother I would watch you at the wedding, make sure you stayed safe.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s why...” Her chin lifted, and she bristled with pride now. “Then you know I locked the door and the windows.” She gestured toward the one through which she’d seen him. “And now they’re unlocked.”
He nodded. “I did see you check the windows, but not the door.” The solid steel exterior door had no window, so he hadn’t been able to see through it.
“I locked it, too,” she insisted.
“So how did someone get in?” he asked. “Does anyone else have a key?”
“Only Lars.”
And her brother would give up his life for hers—nearly had. He would never do anything to upset her. Purposely. Asking Dane to watch over her might have upset her, though—or at least pricked her pride.
Her brow furrowed now. “But I lost my keys a couple of weeks ago. Well, just misplaced them.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“I left them at the coffeehouse near the chapel. One of the baristas called me a couple of hours after I left and told me a customer had found them under a table.”
“Do you mean you called them?” he asked. “How would they know they were yours?”
“The key for the office has the name of the White Wedding Chapel on it with the phone number,” she explained. “I hadn’t even realized I’d lost them. And...”
“What?” he prodded.
“I hadn’t sat down at a table,” she said. “I got a latte to go and was only near the counter.”
He felt like he’d been punched again. “Someone could have taken them.”
“But why return them?” she asked.
“If you’d known they were stolen, you would have changed the locks,” he explained. “This way they had time to make another set and get yours back so you’d only think you’d misplaced them.”
“But why?” she asked. “Why would someone want a set of my keys? Why would they come in here and not take anything? Just use my phone and...”
“Play that recording?” he prodded when her voice trailed off.
Her breath caught. “A recording? You think it’s a recording?”
“Could be.”
“But why? Why keep playing it all night, every night?” she asked.
He’d never been captured, but he knew guys who had been—like Gage Huxton, another Payne bodyguard. “Sleep deprivation is a form of torture,” he said. “It’s used to break someone.”
That was why he had sworn, at the start of every mission, that if something went bad, he would not be taken alive.
“Break?” And her voice did again when she breathed the word. Her eyes were wide, the circles so dark beneath them. She had not been sleeping for a while. “Why?”
“Someone’s trying to drive you crazy.”
She expelled a shuddery breath. “I’m afraid it’s starting to work.”
* * *
The plan had been working. Emilia Ecklund was nearing her breaking point. All the crying wasn’t just the recording; it was her, too.
But then she’d called someone tonight. And Dane Sutton had rushed to her aide. That had nearly messed up everything. What if he’d arrived a little faster?
The whole plan could have been destroyed.
The guy was big and armed—like her brother. It might have been better had her brother showed up. He would have been more concerned about her, about how distraught she was and he probably wouldn’t have checked out the house as thoroughly as this guy had.
What had he found?
Had he seen any footprints? Any evidence that the sounds weren’t just in Emilia’s beautiful head?
Dane Sutton was a problem. A problem they would have to eliminate.
Chapter 6 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
Did Dane really believe her? Or was he only humoring his best friend’s crazy sister? His face was so expressionless that she couldn’t tell. He looked like a statue or a bust carved from granite. His features were that chiseled, his eyes that unreadable.
His stare made her shiver. But she hadn’t been cold earlier—when he’d held her. Then she’d been hot, her body tingling with awareness. With attraction.
She sighed. “Yes, it’s definitely working.” She was losing her mind. She couldn’t be attracted to her brother’s enigmatic friend.
“You’re too strong to let that happen,” Dane said.
Despite her fears and nerves and sleeplessness, she laughed. “Strong?”
She had been going out of her mind.
“You survived weeks in captivity,” he said.
If she’d been stronger, she would not have been in captivity. She would have freed herself instead of having to wait to be rescued.
“You survived nearly losing your son,” he added.
A pang struck her heart, filling it with the fear she’d felt then when she’d thought she would never see her baby again. She glanced toward the stairs and thought of running up them, of grabbing up Blue from his crib, where he’d fallen back to sleep.
He was sleeping. He was safe. He was here—with her.
“I survived that,” she agreed. “Once. I can’t go through that again. If all of this—” she gestured at the windows and the door that she’d locked but the intruder had still managed to get through “—is so that I lose him.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lisa-childs/single-mum-s-bodyguard/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Lisa Childs

Тип: электронная книга

Жанр: Триллеры

Язык: на английском языке

Издательство: HarperCollins

Дата публикации: 16.04.2024

Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв

О книге: A pretend relationship between a bodyguard and single mum turns all too real! Emilia Ecklund’s either losing her mind – or someone wants her to think she is! She hears her child crying when he′s smiling. She sees intruders where there are none. She′s desperate, so she asks her brother′s best friend, former Marine and professional bodyguard Dane Sutton, to investigate. But the only way is for him to move into her home…and then her bed!Dane′s secret mission is to pose as Emilia′s boyfriend while watching every door and window like a hawk. He vows to keep things purely professional, but he′s severely tempted as his feelings intensify. And as the threats escalate, the guarded loner realises he has everything to lose…

• Добавить отзыв
• Имя
• Комментарий
• Опубликовать