GROOM UNDER FIRE (18 page)

“Nobody else needs to get hurt,” Cooper said. “Stephen’s going to make it. You haven’t killed anyone. So there’ll be no murder charges.”

“Just attempted murder,” the lawyer said. “And embezzlement. I might as well commit murder, too. And for all the times you’ve messed up my plan, I really, really want to kill you, Cooper Payne.”

“No!” Tanya shouted.

But the gun was already raised. Mr. Gregory squeezed the trigger. And a shot rang out.

Chapter Eighteen

Tanya’s scream rang in Cooper’s ears. The terror in it chilled his blood. But it wasn’t his blood that was spilled across the white tile floor. Mr. Gregory lay lifelessly in front of him—a bullet in his head.

“Everybody okay?” Logan asked from behind him. Cooper had distracted the man so his brother could get in place to take the shot—if he needed to. Since the lawyer had been squeezing the trigger, Cooper was fortunate that Logan was a damn good shot. Or he might have an actual hole in his heart instead of just a figurative one.

“Yeah, thanks,” Cooper said.

“You could sound a little more grateful,” Logan teased as he dropped to his knees and took Candace’s pulse. Their family usually handled every emotion with humor; otherwise they would have never survived the loss of their father. Maybe Logan had gotten so good at coping that he didn’t betray any other emotions. Or he kept everything inside. “Her pulse is strong.”

“I’m strong,” Candace murmured as she regained consciousness. “I can beat you arm wrestling.”

He chuckled. “Good thing he hit you in the head—since it’s so hard.”

Cooper hoped her heart was hard, too. Because it was obvious that Logan didn’t return the feelings she had for her boss. His big brother couldn’t have gotten that good at hiding his emotions. Because if Cooper had found Tanya lying on the floor like that, he wouldn’t have been able to tease. His hands would have been shaking too badly to take the shot that Logan had. His heart clutched with sympathy for Candace because he knew how badly it hurt when someone didn’t love you the way you loved them.

Tanya wanted a divorce so desperately that she’d been willing to give up her inheritance.

Her hands clutched his shoulder. “Cooper, are you all right?” she asked.

He shrugged off her touch. “Fine.” And because he cared so much, he turned and reached out to her. But he didn’t pull her into his arms as he longed to do. Instead, he just touched her hair, brushing cobwebs and dust from the silken strands. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah...” She expelled a shaky sigh. “When I realized everything...I ran and hid.”

“What were you thinking to meet him here?” he asked. “Alone?” But he knew. She was thinking she wanted to get rid of her husband. And she hadn’t cared how much it would cost her. Even her life?

“I didn’t know he was the one...behind everything...”

“But you shouldn’t have gone off alone,” he reminded her. His guts clenched with dread. He hated to think of what could have happened to her—of how she could have been the one lying on the floor—either with a wound on her head or a bullet in it. “It’s hard to protect someone who won’t let you.”

“It’s over now,” she said. “I don’t need your protection anymore.”

“No,” he agreed. She obviously didn’t need him anymore.

“Is it over?” Logan asked the question now. “Gregory said he only fired those shots at your apartment. He admitted to everything else, so why would he lie about those other times? Parker got shot at outside Stephen’s place.”

“And you got shot at, too,” Cooper remarked as his head began to pound again.

“But I was posing as you,” Logan said.

Despite the pounding, Cooper shook his head. “You and Parker can pass as each other. I’m not so sure anyone would have really been fooled into thinking you were me.” Then maybe those shots outside Stephen’s had really been meant for Parker and hadn’t been just because he’d gone out the door first.

“Do you think there’s someone else?” Tanya asked with a shudder. “That Mr. Gregory was working with someone else?”

Candace had managed to sit up and lean against the wall behind her. “It’s more likely that the someone else has nothing to do with you.”

Tanya turned to Cooper, her eyes wide with concern. “Someone else is trying to kill you?”

“Not me,” he assured her. “I just got back into the country.” And his enemies wouldn’t have been able to follow him here. “This is about something else...” Logan. “It doesn’t concern you.”

A twinge of disappointment squeezed her heart. He had just reminded her that she wasn’t really part of his family. They’d only been married a couple of days before she’d decided to end it.

Sirens wailed outside the mausoleum. “As soon as the police are done taking our report, I’ll bring you to the hospital to see Stephen.”

“Uh, Stephen, of course.” She lifted trembling fingers to her face and brushed away another cobweb. “Is he really going to be all right?”

“He’s strong to have survived the head wound and all those days of being nailed inside a crate,” he said.

She moved her hand to her mouth, as if to hold in another scream.

“And I’m sure he’ll be even better once we get our divorce and you can marry him.”

She loved Stephen, but she didn’t want to marry him. She wanted to stay married to her husband because she was in love with him. Cooper obviously didn’t return those feelings. He hadn’t even come with her to the hospital. He’d sent her in the ambulance with Candace.

After Candace had been taken for a CT scan, Tanya had found Stephen’s hospital room. The minute she stepped inside, she reached out and clutched his hand.

“Don’t!” Rochelle yelled at her from where she sat on the other side of Stephen’s bed.

He cried out, and Tanya pulled back. Seeing how raw his fingers were, he must have been digging at something. The crate Cooper said he’d found him nailed inside...

She shuddered over the horrors her dear friend had been forced to endure—because of her. “I’m sorry. I’m
so
sorry...”

“You should be sorry,” Rochelle snapped at her. “You did all this for nothing—for money that was already gone.”

Nikki must have called and filled in her friend about Mr. Gregory. It had been him acting alone in the attempts on her life and Stephen’s. Cooper had lifted the lawyer’s sleeves to reveal her scratches on his arms. And they’d found evidence that the tear-gas container had been inside his briefcase.

Tears of regret stung Tanya’s eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” Stephen said. “It was my plan that we get married.”

Rochelle gasped. “It was?”

“Your sister didn’t want the money, but I pointed out everything she could do with it—all the people she could help.”

Rochelle’s lips curved into the first genuine smile Tanya had seen on her face since she was a child. “Of course it was your plan. You are such a sweet man.”

Stephen reached his injured hand out to Tanya’s little sister, and he patted her cheek. “You’re pretty sweet yourself.”

Rochelle? What kind of painkillers had they given him?

Rochelle giggled like the child she’d once been before she’d become a bitter, angry adult. “I’m anything but sweet—Tanya will tell you that. I’ve been a complete witch to her.”

“You didn’t know,” Stephen said. “I should have told you...”

“Did you know?” Rochelle asked.

Tanya furrowed her brow with confusion. Was her sister drunk? “It was
his
plan.”

“Not the plan,” Rochelle said with another delighted giggle. “His feelings...”

“Do you mind if I tell her alone?” Stephen asked.

Rochelle nodded and walked out of the room as if she were floating a few feet above the ground.

“Tell me what?” Tanya asked.

“I love your sister.”

“You what?” She had never noticed anything romantic between the two.

“I love Rochelle,” he said.

She was stunned. “When you disappeared, I realized she had feelings for you, but...”

“I didn’t realize it either until I was locked up in that crate,” he said. “Hers was the face I most wanted to see again. Hers the voice I most wanted to hear.”

Tanya uttered a wistful sigh, longing for someone to love her like that. And for that someone to be Cooper.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You have no reason to be sorry,” she assured him. “You and I were never anything more than friends.”

“You, me and Cooper—the three amigos,” he said with a chuckle. “But you and him were never just friends. He married you.”

She nodded. “Just so I would be able to inherit and pay a ransom in case one was made for your return.”

“I heard he had some doubts about my part in all of this,” Stephen said. Obviously Rochelle had told him everything that had happened in his absence. “So maybe he had another reason to marry you.”

“For my protection,” she said. “Mr. Gregory was trying to kill me.”

“You wished it was real, though,” he said. “You love Cooper. You always have.”

But it was even more hopeless than it had been when they were teenagers. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion, “because he doesn’t love me. He’ll never love...” She dropped into the chair beside his bed and her shoulders shook as she wept.

With his injured hand, Stephen patted her hair.

She should have been the one comforting him after everything he’d endured. But, as usual, he was the one offering her comfort.

“I really love you,” she told him.

A noise drew her attention to the door—where Cooper stood. Before she could call out to him, he turned and left, the door swinging shut behind him. He obviously thought she was in love with Stephen. But what did that matter to Cooper since he didn’t love her?

* * *

“S
O
YOU
WOULDN
’
T
stand up as my best man, but you want a favor from me!” Stephen exclaimed as he slammed the door to Cooper’s office and strode up to his desk.

Coop was officially part of the Payne Protection team and as a family member as well as an employee he’d been given an office—a dark-paneled room that was smaller than Logan’s and Parker’s but bigger than the cubby they’d given Nikki.

“I thought it was a favor you’d want, too.” Given what Cooper had seen and heard a couple of days ago in Stephen’s hospital room.

The man had healed quickly—probably because he had someone waiting for him. But he still had a bandage on his head to protect the stitches that had finally stopped the bleeding. And he had dark circles rimming his eyes that were now wide in shock. “You think I want to draw up your divorce papers?”

“I think you want me to divorce Tanya,” Cooper admitted with a trace of bitterness. Maybe he was more petty than he’d thought since he couldn’t bring himself to be happy for his friends.

“Why?” Stephen asked.

“So you can marry her.” Nikki had gone running out minutes ago to meet Tanya and Rochelle at the church to make wedding arrangements with his mother. Apparently Tanya was so anxious to marry Stephen that she’d forgotten that she was still married to Cooper.

He hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten anything about her. The smell of her hair. The taste of her lips. The way she felt when he buried himself deep inside her—the heat and closeness of her body holding him tightly.

He’d felt as if they had become one, just as the minister had said when he’d married them. But Cooper hadn’t seen his wife since he’d heard her declaring her love for another man.

Stephen chuckled. “Everybody said that you would change so much once you became a Marine. And after you got deployed...”

He had changed, but for the most part he thought he did a pretty good job of holding back the memories and the nightmares. Even though Stephen was about to marry the woman Cooper loved, he was his friend. So Coop admitted, “I have changed.”

Stephen shook his head. “No, you haven’t. You’re the same fool you’ve always been...”

“You’re the fool,” Cooper said, “to come to my office and insult me.”

“You called me here with that stupid voice mail you left, asking me to draw up divorce papers for you and Tanya.”

He shrugged. “Annulment papers, then. I’ll sign whatever Tanya wants.”

“Do you know what Tanya wants?”

“You.”

Stephen chuckled again. “She told you that?”

He thought back, trying to remember their conversations. “She told the lawyer she wanted to divorce me.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“Because she doesn’t want to be married to me,” Cooper said.

“Did she tell you that?”

His ribs and back hurt less, but now the pain was throbbing in his head. “Why do you keep asking me all these questions?”

“Because I want to make sure you really know what’s in Tanya’s heart and you’re not just assuming.”

I love you...

But he had only dreamed that she’d whispered those words in his ear. He had been completely awake when he’d heard her declare her feelings for Stephen.

“I’m not just assuming,” he insisted. “I know...”

“Do you know what’s in
your
heart?” Stephen asked.

Cooper snorted. He was not going to have this conversation with the man who was about marry the woman he loved.

“I didn’t know what was in mine,” Stephen admitted. “I didn’t know until I had all those days in the box to think about it.”

“Are you suggesting I nail myself inside a box?”

Stephen grimaced.

“Too soon?” he teased.

“Just a little bit.” But Stephen grinned. “I’ve missed you, my friend.”

And because they were friends, Cooper had to do this. “Draw up the papers for me.”

Stephen reluctantly nodded. “If that’s what you really want, I will.”

Cooper sucked in a breath over the pain of the jab in his heart. “Okay...”

“But I won’t do it until you talk to Tanya.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It is if you want me to do this favor for you,” Stephen said. “You have to do this favor for me.”

“Talking to Tanya is doing a favor for
you?
”

Stephen grinned. “Yes, and it’s a favor that can’t wait. You need to talk to her now.”

“But she’s at the church.” Planning his wedding.

“Exactly. You’ve already wasted enough time,” Stephen admonished him. “Talk to her and then tell me if you want these papers drawn up...”

He didn’t want them at all. He didn’t want to divorce Tanya. But he couldn’t stay married to a woman who loved another man. It was time to end his marriage.