GROOM UNDER FIRE (11 page)

“Why won’t you share them with me?” They were husband and wife—weren’t they supposed to share everything? But they hadn’t even shared a kiss yet to seal their union.

“I’m not sure you can handle it,” he admitted as if she was some fragile female needing his protection.

While she did need his protection, she wasn’t fragile. “I’ve been through a lot in the past couple of days.” She smiled ruefully. “Certainly nothing like you’ve been through when you were deployed, but—”

He pressed a finger over her lips as if to block her from putting her foot any further into her mouth. But he was smiling ruefully, too. “You’re tough,” he said. “You’ve handled getting almost run down and shot at, smoked out and smothered...”

She shivered as he trailed off because she realized he considered this worse than all those things. Then she drew in a deep breath and asked, “Who?”

“You think this is about revenge for something you did or didn’t do on your job.”

Against her better judgment, she’d given him a list of names. But she suspected he had not pursued any of those leads. “And you don’t think so?”

He shook his head. “I think it’s about the money.”

“That’s why I needed it to pay the ransom.”

“What ransom?” he asked. “There’s been no ransom demand.”

Once she’d gotten her phone back from Logan, she’d kept it in her pocket. It hadn’t rung. Her stomach churned. “That’s not good for Stephen...”

“No, it’s not,” Cooper agreed.

“You think he’s dead?” If he was, she might as well have murdered him herself—since she was the reason he’d died. “That’s why they haven’t called?”

He said nothing, just stared at her as if debating the wisdom of sharing his suspicions.

Pain clutched her heart. She needed to know if Stephen was dead. “Cooper?”

“I think they haven’t called because Stephen can’t make his own ransom call.”

Maybe she wasn’t as recovered as she’d thought, but she couldn’t fathom what he was telling her. “What?”

“I think it’s Stephen,” he explained himself. “I think Stephen’s trying to kill you.”

The best friend she’d ever had? She laughed at the ludicrous thought of Stephen betraying her. Because if Cooper was right, Stephen didn’t have to shoot or smother her. The betrayal alone would kill her.

Chapter Eleven

Did her laughter have an edge of hysteria to it? Had his admission struck her too hard?

Cooper studied her face for signs of distress. But he saw only the beauty of her flushed skin and sparkling green eyes. She had always distracted him. Maybe he wouldn’t have had so much trouble in school if she hadn’t been in so many of his classes.

“You don’t believe Stephen could do this.” Did she love him that much that she couldn’t see him for the man he must have become?

“I would sooner believe
you
were trying to kill me.”

He sucked in a breath, as stung as if she’d physically slapped him. “You could actually believe that I would try to kill you?”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” she reminded him. “I don’t know you anymore. I know Stephen. We’ve stayed friends all these years.”

“Obviously you’ve been more than friends,” Cooper said, trying to keep any bitterness from slipping into his voice. He had chosen to leave; what they’d done in his absence was none of his business. And it wouldn’t have been even if he’d stayed.

But now Tanya was
his
wife. So she was his business.

Tanya’s face flushed an even brighter shade of red. But all she said was, “Stephen has always been there for me.”

“Until the wedding.”

“That wasn’t his fault.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Cooper said.

Her brow furrowed with confusion. “How can you think that? You saw the blood. The signs of a struggle.”

“If there was really a struggle, why didn’t you or Mom hear it?”

She jumped up from the couch as if unable to sit still for his accusations. While she paced the small space in the living room of the suite, she kept her distance from the window. She obviously didn’t feel safe.

And she wouldn’t until they’d caught whoever was trying to kill her. But in order to do that they had to consider all the viable suspects.

“Your mom was in the basement,” she reminded him, “talking to the minister. And I was in the bride’s dressing room, way on the other side of the church. Someone must have hit him in the head while he was distracted and knocked him out in the groom’s dressing room. That’s why we didn’t hear anything.”

“We don’t even know yet if the blood that was found is his,” Cooper reminded her. DNA results didn’t come back as quickly as they did on television shows.

“Now you’re saying he hurt someone else?”

If Cooper was right, Stephen had hurt
her
—physically—a few times. And now emotionally...

“It might be his blood,” Cooper amended. “But he could have drawn some earlier and sprayed it around the room.”

She shuddered at the gruesome idea. “Why would he do that?”

“So you would think he was dead or hurt...” And then she wouldn’t marry, forfeiting her inheritance to her sister.

Obviously still in denial, she shook her head. “He wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t even occur to Stephen to do something like that.”

“He might not have been acting alone,” Cooper pointed out.

She stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “Do you think he hired someone?”

“I don’t think he had to hire someone.”

“Someone was willing to help him?” She stared at Cooper for a few moments and sighed. “You already have someone in mind? Who?”

“Your sister.”

“Rochelle?” She didn’t laugh the way she had when he’d suggested Stephen might be behind the attempts on her life. But her brow furrowed again, this time in consideration, and she asked, “Do you think she hates me that much?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know Rochelle. Like you said, I’ve been gone a long time. I feel as if I barely know Nikki—she was so young when I left.”

“Nikki adores you,” Tanya assured him. “Rochelle doesn’t adore me. She can’t stand me.” Her voice heavy with resignation, she admitted, “She just might hate me enough to try to ruin my wedding. But Stephen would never work with her to hurt me.”

Cooper had worried about telling her what he’d learned. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, too. So he hesitated.

But, of course, she noticed. She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You found something that made you suspicious of them.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m just suspicious of everyone.”

She nodded. “Yes, you’ve changed. You’re not the boy I used to know. You’re cynical now.”

He had reason to be. As a teenager who’d lost his dad, he’d had reason to be. “Everybody grows up and changes.”

“I’m not so sure about Rochelle,” she ruefully admitted. “But if you’re trying to tell me that Stephen’s changed...” She shook her head. “I know him too well.”

“Did he tell you about all the emails Rochelle sent him?”

She tensed, as if his words had struck her.

“So he didn’t tell you...”

She shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he was hiding them,” she defended Stephen. “Maybe he didn’t want to cause any more trouble between me and Rochelle. I can’t imagine those emails were telling him how lucky he was to be marrying me.”

“No,” he replied. “She didn’t want him to marry you at all. She wanted him to marry her—for
all
the money.”

She laughed. “And that’s why you think they’re working together?”

“All is more than half,” he pointed out. “It’s powerful motivation.”

“Not for Stephen. He doesn’t care about the money.”

“Everybody cares about money—especially
that
amount of money.” Given how wealthy her grandfather had been, her inheritance had to be millions—maybe even billions.

“Grandfather’s lawyer told me that you care about the money, so much that you may have gotten Stephen out of the way so you could marry me yourself.”

He flinched with a little twinge of guilt. He had been jealous of Stephen marrying her but not so petty that he would have wished harm come to him. He had considered Stephen his friend before he’d begun to consider him a suspect.

She laughed. “But I assured Mr. Gregory that you really didn’t want to marry me at all—that’s why I didn’t let him bring that prenup to you.”

“You should have let him,” he said. “I would have signed it.” And he really wished he had. He didn’t want her doubting him. It wouldn’t be easy to keep her safe if she didn’t trust him.

“I was worried that you might be offended.”

“That he thinks I want your money? Or that he thought I got rid of Stephen to get it?” Apparently, Arthur Gregory thought even less of Cooper than his employer had. He shrugged off the man’s accusation; he didn’t care what anyone—except Tanya—thought of him.

She laughed again but nervously this time. “He didn’t think the money was your only reason.”

“What other reason would I have?” Stephen had always been a good friend to him. He’d even tried to stay in touch after Cooper had gone away. But Cooper had been determined to put his past behind him and move on from his loss—of his dad and of Tanya. But by doing that he’d almost lost more—his family and his life.

“Me.” She laughed again with self-deprecation. “He thinks you always had a crush on me.”

If he wanted her to trust him, he had to be straight with her. “I did.”

But if he was being completely honest, he shouldn’t have used the past tense. Because he definitely still had a crush on her—one so big that he maybe should have even called it
love.

* * *

G
IDDINESS
RUSHED
OVER
Tanya, so that her breath quickened and her pulse raced and her head grew light. Maybe she wasn’t completely recovered from the asthma attack. Or maybe she was still that teenage girl who had been madly in love with Cooper Payne.

But that love had been crushed years ago—when Cooper had insisted they were just friends. “If he was right about that,” she said, “was he right about my grandfather warning you to stay away from me?”

He sighed and nodded.

And hope flared that maybe he had shared all those feelings she’d had for him.

But then he spoke. “He was right, though. We had nothing in common then. You were going off to college and I was going off to the Marines. Maybe it was smarter to never get involved than to get involved and break up.”

“Why would we have broken up?” she asked. She never would have broken up with him. She would have written him letters daily. She would have waited for him to come home to her. Maybe she had waited anyway—since she’d never fallen for another man the way she’d fallen for the boy he’d been.

“We had nothing in common then,” he repeated. “And we have even less in common now.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “You want to protect people—as a Marine and now as a bodyguard. I want to protect people, too.” That was why she’d wanted her inheritance—to help more families than the state’s limited budget allowed her to help.

“As a social worker, you do protect them,” he said. “I’m actually surprised your grandfather didn’t talk you into pursuing a different career.”

“He tried,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t as easy to manipulate as you must have been.”

He scowled as if she’d insulted him. And then he laughed. “Your grandfather didn’t manipulate me.”

“He got his way,” she said. “Just like he’s getting his way now—getting me to marry for his money.”

Cooper laughed again. “I was the last person he wanted you to marry, so he’s definitely not getting his way.”

“Mr. Gregory said that Grandfather would haunt him if he’d walked me down the aisle to you.” She sighed. “I sometimes wonder if he’s haunting me now, with all that’s happened—the threats, Stephen’s disappearance...”

His mouth curved into a small grin. “You think a ghost is responsible for all this?”

“I’d rather blame a ghost than myself.”

“None of this is your fault,” he assured her.

“You want me to believe its Stephen’s.”

“And maybe Rochelle’s, working together.”

She shuddered. “I don’t want to believe it’s either of them.”

“What about me?” he asked. “Do you want to believe it’s me?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Yet goose bumps lifted on her skin. What if it was him? What if Mr. Gregory had been right? And she was alone with the man who’d gotten rid of Stephen?

“I see your fear,” he said. “You may not want to believe it, but you’re worried that your grandfather’s lawyer could be right about me.” He reached inside his jacket where he kept his gun holstered. But he pulled out his phone instead. “I’ll call one of my brothers to take my place.”

“Don’t,” she said.

But he’d already pressed a button on his cell—probably the two-way feature. Instead of a voice emanating from the speaker, gunshots rang out. And he cursed. “Logan! Logan, damn it! Are you all right?”

“Go to him,” she urged. “Make sure he’s safe!”

Cooper shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can leave me,” she said. “I’ll be safe. Or do what Logan did and leave me a gun.”

“I can’t go to Logan.” Cooper brushed his hand over the top of his head before clenching his fingers into a fist of frustration. “Because he didn’t tell me where he was going. Neither did Parker.”

She was shocked. “You didn’t trust each other?”

“We didn’t want anyone to be coerced into revealing the other’s location.”

Like any of his family would have given up any of the others. They weren’t like her and her sister. Rochelle had tried to talk her groom out of marrying her. Out of spite or greed?

“Logan!” he shouted into the phone.

The shots reverberated and then tires squealed. And Logan finally replied with a string of curses. “The weasel got away again.”

“Did you see him?”

“Not his face,” Logan griped. “Had a hat pulled low, sunglasses and his collar pulled up.”

“Could it have been Stephen?”

“Same height and build,” Logan replied. “Could’ve been...”

And for the first time Tanya realized it was a possibility that Stephen had turned on her—that he’d decided he wanted all the money. She was dimly aware of the rest of Cooper’s conversation.

“Are you all right?” he asked his brother.

“Yeah, but the hotel will be pissed over the windows of our suite getting shot up.”

“Seems to be this guy’s M.O.”

“Coward,” Logan cursed him. “The police are coming. They probably won’t be surprised to see
me
again...”

“Good luck,” Cooper murmured before clicking off. “I’ll call Parker.”

“Wait!” she implored him. “It doesn’t make sense that Stephen would do this. He has money.”

“People with money never seem to think they have enough,” Cooper replied. “Your grandfather was certainly never satisfied.”

Not just with the size of his bank accounts but with his family either.

“But Stephen...” She shuddered. “It makes no sense, especially now. We’re already married. Why keep trying to kill me?”

“If you listened to your lawyer, I’m probably doing it so I can collect your inheritance myself.”

“But Rochelle could challenge you,” she said, “since our marriage hasn’t been consummated.” Heat flushed her face that she’d brought up that idea—and an image in her head of Cooper. Naked.

“What?” he asked, his eyes dilating as if he had conjured an image of his own.

“She doesn’t even have to kill me to collect her inheritance,” Tanya realized. “All she has to do is wait until tomorrow and challenge our marriage.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we don’t consummate our wedding before my birthday, she could challenge its validity.” Knowing Rochelle, she probably would anyway—just to be spiteful.

Cooper nodded as realization dawned on him. “And then she and Stephen can marry and collect it all?”

She hesitated, unwilling to believe that her best friend could have agreed to betray her. Then she sighed in resignation and replied, “Yes.”

“We can lie,” he said. “We can say that we consummated our marriage. How is she going to prove we’re lying? Aren’t you a good liar?”

She had never been until that day she’d agreed with him that they could have only ever been friends. He was the only one who had ever believed her lie. “According to my sister, no.”

Because Rochelle hadn’t believed that Tanya was in love with Stephen. She’d realized that she’d only intended to marry him to collect her inheritance.