Bridegroom Bodyguard (12 page)

And as she kissed him, she cried out with pleasure. And she peaked again. He joined her in ecstasy, groaning her name, as he filled her. But even as their racing hearts began to slow, he didn’t release her; he kept her clutched tightly in his arms. He didn’t want any space between them—he wanted her touching him everywhere.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, as he skimmed his fingertips lightly over the bandage on her forehead.

She chuckled. “I’m better than okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. You’ve already been through too much.” And he should have been focused on protecting her. Instead he’d lost himself in pleasure—in her.

“You didn’t take advantage,” she assured him. “I—I wanted it, too....”

Why? Was she falling for him? Concern for her heart clutched his heart. He didn’t want to hurt her—like he’d hurt so many others.

He cared about her—more than he ever had cared about anyone else. Maybe he was even falling for her. But they were in too much danger to think about forever—to believe in happily ever after. And even when the danger passed, he couldn’t give her the future she deserved—one without heartache and pain.

He didn’t want her to fall for him, didn’t want her to grieve for him someday like his mother had his father. But then, his mother had never regretted her life with his father; she had loved the years they’d had together, the family they had made together.

He and Sharon and Ethan were family. Could he really be a father? A husband?

Only if he survived....

Chapter Fifteen

Sharon’s hand shook as she lifted her finger toward the security panel. She could do this....

The judge’s body was gone. It had been transported days ago in the coroner’s van to the morgue. Not that it would take an autopsy to determine what had killed her. Her neck had been brutally broken. She shuddered over the violent way her former employer had died.

A strong arm wrapped around her shoulders and the warmth of his body chased away the chill. As always, she felt safe in his arms. But she couldn’t believe what they had done, that they had consummated their marriage. Maybe it had all just been a dream....

But he touched her now, comforting her. With the comfort came the memories, of how he had touched her all over. Goose bumps lifted on her skin, and she shivered. But she wasn’t cold—not with his arm around her.

“You coming back here was a bad idea,” he said. “You’ve already been through too much tonight.”

“Last night,” she corrected him, because the sun was already up. It had come up while they had been lying in bed together, still wrapped in each other’s arms.

She would rather be here than back there, embarrassing herself more. She had thrown herself at him. He had caught her, but he was a playboy, so he would have caught any woman who had acted like she had.

“And you couldn’t have come back here without me,” she reminded him.

He shook his head. “I can now. Nikki shut down the security system.”

Because there was no one to protect anymore....

He pushed open the gate. Crime-scene tape was strung around the estate and they stepped over it.

“Even though you could have gotten inside without me, you wouldn’t know where to look,” she pointed out.

“Look for what?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Whatever someone else was looking for the night Brenda was killed.” If only she knew what that was...

“Someone was looking for something at the bodyguard’s apartment, too,” Parker said. And he shuddered. That crime scene must have been gruesome, too.

She was glad she hadn’t been with him then. But she wished she hadn’t been in the interrogation room, either, with Detective Sharpe.

“They must have been looking for whatever he was supposed to have taken from Brenda’s,” she surmised. “You think he killed her?”

He nodded. “She scratched his hands and arms.”

Brenda would have fought. She had been a fighter; it was one of the things Sharon had admired most about her.

“You said her laptop was missing,” he remembered. “I didn’t see it at the bodyguard’s place, either.”

“Books were ripped apart,” she said as they stepped inside the house again. She shivered. Maybe it was just because nobody had turned off the central air yet, but it was colder inside the house than it had been outside. “They weren’t looking for her laptop in a book.”

Parker nodded. “True. And everything was torn apart at her bodyguard’s apartment—even the pillows from his couch. So what were they looking for?”

“Flash drive,” Sharon replied. “Brenda didn’t trust computers.” She really didn’t trust anyone, thus her need for bodyguards. But then, her murder proved she hadn’t been paranoid; she’d been right—especially since Parker believed it was her bodyguard who had killed her. “She constantly backed up her work.”

“Work?” he asked. “Are you talking about her court cases or that book she was writing?”

“She wasn’t working in the courts,” she reminded him. “She had taken her leave to work on the book. When she asked me to proofread it, Chuck was here.”

“That’s why someone would think that you might know what’s in her book. Do you have any idea what was in it?” Parker asked.

“I never got the chance to proofread it,” Sharon replied. “I only know what you know about her. I don’t know what else she might have written about.” Sharon had been envious of the life the older woman had led, of the successes she’d had. But she wouldn’t have killed her over it. “Who would have killed her over her own life?”

Parker shrugged those broad shoulders that just hours ago Sharon had clutched as their bodies joined together. She had never felt such pleasure, had never felt so special. But that was just because Parker was an excellent lover; he was notorious for his skills. He had made her feel special, but she doubted it had been special to him.

He didn’t love her, but despite thinking she would be immune to his excessive charms, she had foolishly fallen for him. She loved her groom—her husband. And that was why she had insisted on coming back to the judge’s house. Parker was doing his part to make them safe; she had to do hers.

“Maybe she wasn’t writing about just her life,” Parker remarked. “Maybe she was including other people’s lives—lives that had either impacted or had intersected hers.”

Sharon shrugged. She couldn’t see Brenda writing about someone else.

“I know she was self-involved,” Parker said, as if he’d read her mind. “Boy, do I know she was self-involved. I still can’t believe she didn’t tell me about Ethan—that she used me.”

“She chose you,” Sharon told him. “She respected you. She thought you were a good man.” And a good-looking one, too. “That you had integrity and intelligence and charisma.” Brenda wasn’t the only one who could see all those special qualities in Parker Payne.

But he shrugged off her compliments as if he didn’t believe her.

The night before, he had forced her to accept his compliments, so she pressed him. “It’s true. You are all those things.” And so much more.

“I doubt Brenda wrote about me,” he said. “Good things wouldn’t drive someone to commit murder. She must have written bad things about someone to make herself look better.”

That was something that Brenda would have done.

Following his logic, Sharon added, “Maybe she revealed some secrets she knew.”

“Some secrets someone doesn’t want revealed.”

Sharon checked the usual places Brenda would have stashed a flash drive. Her desk drawer. The pockets in her empty laptop bag. But someone else had already checked those. And Brenda had been too smart to hide a flash drive someplace where someone would have found it.

So Sharon searched the unusual places—the dirt in the plants and the trim around the doorjambs. Parker followed her lead, but they came up empty-handed.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “If someone had already found it, they wouldn’t still be trying to kill us—would they?”

Parker shrugged. “They might if they think we know what’s on it. Chuck heard her asking you to proofread the book.”

“He also heard her telling me to take Ethan and hide for two weeks and that if I hadn’t heard from her to bring you...” Her face flushed with embarrassment for Brenda. But she needed to tell him everything.

“To bring me Ethan,” he finished for her.

“She didn’t call him by his name,” she admitted. “She told me to trust only you—no one else—and to bring you the
package.
”

He cursed. “She called my son a package?”

She sighed; she didn’t want to speak ill of a dead woman. “Brenda wasn’t particularly maternal. I knew what she meant, but Chuck might have been confused.”

“He might have thought you were bringing me something else,” he said. “Like the flash drive. And that was probably what he’d told whoever had tortured him before he died.”

She gasped in horror. “He was tortured?”

He nodded. “He must not have wanted to put you in danger.” He touched her face. “I don’t blame him for wanting to protect you.”

That was why he had married her. “But I don’t have the flash drive,” she said. “She didn’t give me anything to give—”

He held up his hand, silencing her as he reached for his weapon. Then she heard it, too—the knob turning and the front door opening...

Someone had either come to search the mansion again or they had followed them here to kill them.

“Returning to the scene of the crime again,” a cocky voice remarked as Detective Sharpe stepped inside the den. The rookie cop was close to his side, like a dog on a short leash. Both of them held their weapons, both barrels pointed at him.

Parker didn’t reholster his weapon. Not yet. His heartbeat hadn’t slowed even after he had identified the intruders. In fact, it had quickened. He moved forward slightly, trying to step between Sharon and the questionable lawmen.

“What about you?” Parker asked. “Why are you here, Sharpe?”

“I have someone watching the place.”

It was pretty obvious who that someone was—his nervous sidekick. “Why?”

Sharpe waved his free arm to indicate Parker and Sharon.

“You were looking for us?” And Parker’s heartbeat quickened even more.

Sharon’s breath audibly caught, too. She didn’t trust the detective any more than he did. “Why were you looking for us?” she asked.

“You didn’t give your statement about the accident last night, Ms. Wells,” Sharpe said.

Parker snorted. “That was no accident. That was an attempt on our lives.”

“Yet the two of you are alive and four other men are in the morgue,” Sharpe said. “Seems like wherever the two of you go, people die.”

Maybe the detective should have taken that as a warning because Parker didn’t dare lower his weapon yet, not when both of theirs were still raised.

“Those men tried to kill us,” Sharon said. “Parker saved my life.” She drew in a deep breath and added, “And it’s no longer Ms. Wells. It’s Mrs. Payne.”

The detective chuckled, but he didn’t seem particularly surprised. “I guess I owe you both congratulations.” He focused on Parker again. “Especially you,” he said, “since now that you’ve married her, she doesn’t have to testify against you. She can invoke spousal privilege.”

“You can’t hold him responsible for what happened last night,” Sharon defended him. “Those men were going to kill us.”

“Or so you claim,” the detective replied with that snide smile Parker wanted so badly to wipe off the man’s pasty face.

“I claimed it, too,” Parker said, “when I gave my statement to the officers who were at the crime scene last night. They believed me. They had already talked to witnesses who had either been on the road or in the houses by the scene.”

Sharpe shrugged. “Those officers know you,” he said. “They worked with you or your brother or your father, so they want to believe what you’re telling them.”

“They’re good cops—honest cops,” Parker defended the men. He couldn’t say the same about Sharpe and his sidekick.

“The feds sent an agent to investigate the River City P.D.,” Sharpe shared. “To make sure there is no more corruption than your father’s partner.”

Parker narrowed his eyes and studied the men. They were obviously nervous about that fed’s arrival. “My father’s partner had been retired for many years. His conduct—long in the past—wouldn’t have triggered an internal-affairs investigation, let alone a federal investigation. What the hell’s going on in the department?”

And who had reported it? Judge Brenda Foster? Maybe she had sent that flash drive to someone in the bureau or the Justice Department. Was that what she had been writing about—police corruption?

Sharpe shrugged but didn’t lower his gun. “Maybe they’re investigating you.”

Parker snorted again. “I’m no longer with the department.”

“But you and your brother still have friends there—too many friends that might look in the other direction and cover for you,” Sharpe said. “That’s why I wanted to speak to you myself.”

“Why not call me down to the station?” Parker asked. “Or go by the offices of Payne Protection to find me? Why track me down here?”

“I figured you would come back,” Sharpe said, “to the scene of perhaps your first crime....”

“Criminals really don’t return to the scenes of their crimes.” Sharon spoke now. “I’ve studied enough court cases to know that’s not true.” She narrowed her big eyes and glared at the detective. “
You
know we’re not criminals.”

Almost too casually Sharpe asked, “Then why did you come back here?”

The guy was such an idiot that he thought everyone was as stupid as he was. But Parker had had enough of the games, so he answered honestly. “I expect for the same reason that the two of you showed up here.”

“What reason are you talking about?” Sharpe asked, the snide smile slipping away to reveal his obvious nerves as sweat beaded above his upper lip.

“You’re looking for the judge’s flash drive,” Parker replied.

The rookie glanced up at Sharpe, who betrayed himself with a widening of his eyes. Sharon had been right about the judge backing up her book on a flash drive, and that drive was exactly what someone was looking for.

He just hadn’t expected that someone to be Detective Sharpe. What secrets could that kid have to hide? His incompetence? His ignorance? Those secrets had come out the minute he had opened his cocky mouth. But was there something else? Something he was worried that the fed might uncover in his investigation?

But even if the judge had dirt on Sharpe, the young detective didn’t have enough money to offer the reward that had been offered for Parker’s and Sharon’s murders. He was the son of a single mother, who was the chief of police’s younger sister—not heir to millions like Sharon.

“What flash drive?” Sharpe asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about....”

Parker chuckled. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I can see it on both your faces. Too bad I never played poker with either of you. I feel like I could have made some money off you.” He turned toward the younger cop, who was obviously more nervous as his gun began to shake. “Is that what you’re getting out of this? Money? Were you supposed to kill me the other night—at the bodyguard’s apartment?”

The kid shook his head, but his face flushed a bright red, revealing his guilt.

“Could you have done it?” Parker wondered. “If my brother hadn’t shown up, could you have pulled the trigger?”

Maybe he did it to prove a point or maybe because Parker had scared him too much, but the kid squeezed the trigger now. And a shot rang out....

* * *

S
HARON
FLINCHED
. But no bullet struck her. Then she turned toward Parker, and he stood straight yet. There was no blood spreading across his white shirt. “Did he hit you?”