GROOM UNDER FIRE (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

His gun was in the other room and his pants were on the floor. Some bodyguard Cooper had proved to be. But he let none of that distract him as he had let Tanya distract him. He vaulted out of the bed and grabbed for his gun in the living room of the suite. He managed to unholster and aim the barrel at the door as it opened.

He could have waited for the suspect to step inside, but if the shooter started firing wildly again, he might hit Tanya. Cooper hadn’t shut the door between the bedroom and living area. But he couldn’t see her. She had scrambled out of bed, hopefully to put on some clothes.

He hadn’t had time.

“Come any closer and I’ll blow your head off!” he threatened.

A laugh rang out; it was loud and grating and obnoxiously familiar. “Don’t shoot your favorite brother!” Parker poked his head around the door and then he laughed again, more loudly, as he spied Cooper’s nakedness.

“Get out!” he yelled at him.

“Okay, okay, I’ll be waiting outside.” Parker stepped back out and pulled the door closed.

“You told me they didn’t know where you are,” Tanya said, her voice full of accusation and embarrassment. She was fully dressed now, while he stood naked before her.

“I didn’t think they did...”

Had one of them followed him? Didn’t they trust him? Then, given how badly he had just lost his objectivity, they were right not to trust him.

Cursing beneath his breath, he hurriedly grabbed up his clothes and pulled them on. Even though he knew it was Parker who’d broken in, he strapped on his holster and weapon, too, before stepping outside the hotel room.

Parker leaned against the wall opposite the door. He was still chuckling. “And they say
I’m
the playboy...”

Forcing the words out between gritted teeth, Cooper said, “I am not a playboy.”

“That’s right,” Parker said. “You’re a married man now.”

Officially married now that they had consummated it.

“And you’re a damn fool,” he retorted. He wasn’t just teasing now.

“A damn fool that tracked you down,” Parker taunted him.

Guilt overwhelmed Cooper. He had failed to protect Tanya in every way. “How?”

“I have my sources.”

“Have they turned up Stephen yet?” That would explain Parker’s reason for tracking him down.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then why are you here? Did you just get bored?”

He laughed again. “Yeah, I didn’t get sent undercover with a girl.”

“Nikki’s a girl.”

“She’s my sister,” he said with great disgust.

“You two didn’t get shot at?”

“
We
didn’t get followed,” he said with a huge grin. Logan wasn’t about to live this one down.

“Neither did I,” Cooper said. “So why’d you track me down and blow our hiding place? And a better question yet, why on earth did you pick the lock and open the door?” He had very nearly shot him.

“I heard the screaming,” Parker said.

Heat climbed from Cooper’s neck into his face.
He
was never going to live this one down. “Maybe you’re not the playboy everyone thinks you are if you’ve never heard that kind of scream before...”

Parker punched his shoulder. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

“At least you’ve dated polite women...”

Parker laughed again. “You’re funny. I’ve forgotten how funny you can be.”

So had Cooper. He’d left his family because they’d reminded him of his father—and his loss and the tragedy and grief. He’d forgotten the teasing and laughter. The fun. He’d lost that when he’d left.

But if he didn’t find out who kept shooting at all of them, he risked losing that again. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Is Logan really all right? He didn’t get hit?”

“Of course not. If it had been at all close, Candace would have jumped in front and taken the bullet for him.”

It was no secret to anyone but Logan that one of his employees was hopelessly in love with him. Cooper had had to be back only a few days to figure it out.

“If Logan’s fine, why are you here?”

Parker groaned. “Mom.”

“Logan’s letting her interfere in his business again?”

“She’s Mom,” he said as if that explained it all, and it actually did. “He was only appeasing her by saying that if I could find you, he’d have me bring you back.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks if I could find you, someone else could, too. However, he is completely underestimating my skills.” But instead of being resentful like Nikki, Parker simply shrugged—unconcerned.

Logan wasn’t the only one guilty of underestimating Parker; Cooper had, too. “He may be right...” Had he been gone so long that he didn’t know the city as well as he once had? “How did you find me?”

“Figured you’d pick a nice place—it being your honeymoon and all.” He smirked.

“And you have contacts here?”

“Higher-class contacts, but yeah.”

“Where are we supposed to go now that you’ve blown this spot?”

“Back to the church.”

“Like that place is safe...”

“Mom thinks it is—not because of the place but because we’ll all be together. She thinks we’re stronger that way than split up.”

Given that Logan had just been shot at, Cooper couldn’t argue her logic. If they had been together, someone would have been able to chase down the shooter while the one getting shot at took cover. “We can all be together, but we don’t have to be at the church.”

“Since the little tear-gas bomb changed her plans for yesterday, she wants to have your reception today,” Parker explained.

“It’s a little late for that.”

“It’s not too late for Tanya’s birthday party.”

“That’s tomorrow,” Cooper reminded them. She’d had to be married by that time in order to collect her inheritance. But not only did she have to be married, she’d had to consummate that marriage. Cooper had to remind himself that was the only reason they’d made love—for money.

Love had had nothing to do with it—at least not on her side.

“Mom doesn’t think the food will last another day.”

And given that Logan had just been shot at again, maybe he and Tanya wouldn’t either.

* * *

S
MOKE
ROSE
FROM
the tiny flickering flames. Tanya closed her eyes to block out the fire. Then she expelled the breath she held and hoped that she’d blown them all out. All thirty of them. There had been enough room for all of the candles since it was her wedding cake Mrs. Payne had put out for her wedding reception/birthday party.

“Did you make a wish, dear?” the older woman asked.

Tanya opened her eyes and her gaze fell upon her husband. And she wished it was real.

Sure, they had consummated their marriage. But they hadn’t made love. At least he hadn’t.

She was in love. But she was in that alone.

She wasn’t alone now. All of the Payne family and some of their employees had gathered in the high-ceilinged lower level of the Little White Wedding Chapel. It was a beautiful room with brocade wallpaper that looked like lace on the walls, and the coffered ceiling had built-in lights. Lights twinkled everywhere, making the space look like Wonderland. Even the floor had a sparkle to it—as if it had been sprinkled with fairy dust.

And she thought again, as she had when Mrs. Payne had produced that dress, that the older woman could be a fairy godmother. But Tanya was no Cinderella; she was unlikely to wind up with the prince.

“I wished that your dress is really okay,” she replied.

Mrs. Payne shook her head in disappointment. “You’re not supposed to tell what you wished for.”

“Or it won’t come true...”

“In this case, it’s already true,” Mrs. Payne said. “The dress is fine.”

“They didn’t cut it off?”

Mrs. Payne shook her head. “The paramedic was female. She understood the importance of your wedding dress.”

“
Your
wedding dress.” Tanya had only borrowed it because someone had maliciously destroyed hers. She glanced around the room until she located Rochelle. Why had she come to the party? To try to kill her again?

With all the Paynes and their associates in the room, she would be a fool to try anything here. But then, she’d been a fool to try anything at all. Had Tanya ever really known her younger sister?

Not like the Paynes knew each other.

She had overheard Cooper’s conversation with Parker—their male ribbing. And she had worried that she would never be able to face the older Payne brother after what he had overheard. But when she’d stepped into the hall, he had acted as charming and friendly as he always had.

It was Cooper who acted differently. Or maybe it was that he acted the same, too, and she wanted him to be different with her. He still acted as if they were only old acquaintances. He didn’t even act as if he was her friend, let alone her husband.

Her lover.

Disappointment tugged at the smile she’d pasted on when she’d stepped inside the reception hall.

“Now it’s time to cut the cake,” Mrs. Payne announced. “Cooper, get over here.”

He’d had his head bent close to his brothers’, as they huddled together in one corner of the room. They were all such beautiful men with that black hair and those eyes so bright a blue they glittered, like all those twinkling lights, even from across the room. Cooper’s gaze met hers as he lifted his head.

And her heart clutched inside her chest, stealing her breath for a moment.

“No,” she protested her unreciprocated feelings and Mrs. Payne’s suggestion. “You can cut the cake. It’s not like this is a real reception.”

“Maybe it’s more real than you’re willing to admit,” Mrs. Payne said with a little smile and a twinkle in her brown eyes.

Had Parker told her what he’d overheard?

Or had Tanya given herself away with how she couldn’t stop looking at Cooper? But she didn’t see him as he was now, dressed in his sweater and jeans; she saw him as he’d been in bed with her, gloriously naked and aroused. Wanting
her...

Or after his last deployment, would any woman have done?

Mrs. Payne squeezed her shoulder. “It will all work out, honey.”

How could she believe that—after how tragically she had lost her husband? She had to know that not all endings were happy.

Sometimes things just ended. Like her marriage to Cooper was destined to end—in divorce now since they would not be able to get an annulment after what they’d done that afternoon.

“What will all work out?” Cooper asked as he joined them, his blue eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Did he suspect, as she had come to suspect, that his mother was playing matchmaker for the two of them?

Mrs. Payne smiled and patted his cheek. “Don’t worry so much, sweetheart.”

“Easier said than done with a shooter on the loose...” He glanced in her sister’s direction, too.

Tanya had never seen Rochelle with a gun. She doubted she would be able to fire one at all, let alone with any accuracy. And the night of the rehearsal, she’d been so drunk that Nikki had driven her home and stayed to make sure she was all right. She wouldn’t have been able to try to run down Tanya with the car or to shoot out the window of her apartment. So, if she was behind the attempts, she was working with someone else.

Stephen?

The pain of betrayal struck her with a jolt. She didn’t want to believe he would hurt her or anyone else. But who else could it be?

Someone from her job wouldn’t have known about her inheritance. She had been very careful that no one had learned she was Benedict Bradford’s granddaughter. So they would have had no reason to try to stop her wedding.

“You and your brothers will find out who’s done all these horrible things,” Mrs. Payne said to Cooper. “It’s such a shame that the wedding was ruined. You should be in your tux and gown right now.”

“But we’re not, Mom,” he pointed out. “So there’s no reason to cut the cake or whatever other nonsense you have planned.”

She gasped and pressed a hand to her heart as if her son had driven the knife she held into it. “Weddings are not nonsense. They are tradition. They are the foundation that needs to be laid for a long and happy marriage.”

“Mom, you know I’m not the man Tanya was supposed to marry.” And just as she’d said, he added, “This isn’t real.”

His mother, probably wisely, didn’t share her cryptic comment with her son. Instead, she handed him the knife. “But it needs to look real.” She glanced toward Rochelle, too, who had been joined by the lawyer. “People need to believe this is real...”

Would that bring Stephen back safely? Or was he the threat?

Once Cooper’s hand closed around the handle of the knife, Mrs. Payne lifted Tanya’s hand and placed it over his. And she squeezed, as if offering her blessing.

Her blessing wasn’t what Tanya needed. It was Cooper’s love. But his hand tensed beneath hers, as if he couldn’t bear her touch.

Now.

He hadn’t protested when she’d touched him back at the hotel. Or actually, he had protested—because he hadn’t wanted her to rush their lovemaking. He had taken his time with her—kissing and caressing every inch of her.

Her skin flushed and tingled as she remembered how thoroughly he’d made love to her. He gazed down at her, and that glint in his eyes ignited to a hot spark, as if he was sharing those memories with her.

Her lips parted, and her breath escaped in a soft gasp. She wanted him to lean down and press his mouth to hers. She wanted his kiss.

She wanted him.

His hand tensed beneath hers, as if he felt the heat of her desire. Then he pushed the knife through the bottom layer of cake.

Desire heated her skin and blood, sending it racing fast and heavy through her veins. Would she ever not want him? Even here, in front of his family and what was left of hers, she couldn’t control her passion for him.

He turned the blade of the knife to lift the cake. It was red velvet with cream-cheese frosting. She couldn’t wait for a taste. With his fingers he broke off a smaller piece of the slice they’d cut together and held it to her lips. She opened her mouth and took a bite—carefully—so that her tongue managed to flick across his fingers. She preferred his taste to the cake’s.