Buch lesen: «The Risk Series: A Bree and Tanner Thriller»

Chapter One

In the past year Bree Daniels had been chased across the country, shot at, kidnapped, almost blown up, strangled and had watched the man she loved almost bleed to death right in front of her.

But she could honestly say none of that was as treacherous as what she was going through now.

Planning her wedding.

Seriously. When a bad guy with a gun or a knife came at you, you knew you were in trouble. But nobody suspected that agreeing to get married and giving the ladies of the small town where you’d made your home free rein in planning said nuptials was also just as dangerous.

If they were ever arrested, wedding planners would need their own special section in prison. In isolation. Because otherwise they would take over and rule the place, for sure.

For the past seven months the women of Risk Peak—mostly Cassandra, her good friend and future sister-in-law, and Cheryl, owner of the Sunrise Diner and surrogate mother to Bree—had tracked Bree down, no matter where she’d tried to hide, demanding answers to impossible questions of all types.

Like what kinds of flower arrangements Bree wanted. And whether she wanted a custard cream, buttercream or whipped cream to go along with the raspberry ganache in the cake.

When Bree had finally had a chance to look up what a ganache was, she wanted to throw her computer across the room. Why the heck hadn’t they just said raspberry filling?

The ladies were so enthusiastic about the event that Bree wasn’t even sure they would notice if she fled the state.

The thought had crossed her mind.

But she was trying to be more normal. Normal women were excited about all this wedding planning, right? Cassandra had shown her the scrapbook she’d made from the ages of seven to eighteen. That thing had roughly four million pages of pictures of wedding gowns, color schemes, flower types and bridesmaids’ dresses.

Bree had mentioned there were much better ways to organize the information electronically, but Cassandra had just rolled her eyes and said that wasn’t the point.

Bree wasn’t exactly sure what was the point, but she knew that most women were a lot more excited about this whole planning process than she was.

Bree just wanted to be Mrs. Tanner Dempsey. She wished she could go back in time and punch her past self in the face for not taking him up on his offer/threat to drag her in front of the nearest county judge and get married right away after they’d gotten engaged.

Well, the second time they’d gotten engaged.

The first time he’d asked her it had been right after a monster from her past had almost blown them both up. They’d been covered in smoke, bleeding and a little shaky on their feet. But Tanner had dropped to one knee right there and asked her to marry him, not wanting to wait a second longer.

The second time, a few weeks later on Valentine’s Day, Tanner had taken her deep into the land of the ranch they both loved and asked her again—so romantically—at sunset, the gorgeous Rocky Mountains in the distance.

He’d explained that when she told their grandkids about how he’d asked her to marry him, he wanted this to be the story she would tell.

She planned to tell both.

But the next day when Tanner had threatened to drag her to get married right then, she should’ve taken him up on it.

Maybe then she wouldn’t be going through the most vicious of wedding planning torture: the gown fittings. The gown everything. She’d almost rather be on the run for her life than be twisted, pulled on, poked and prodded and, worst of all, oohed over.

“My brother is going to lose his…stuff when he sees you in this wedding gown.”

Cassandra Dempsey Martin was the only person Bree knew who could out curse a seasoned sailor yet still be in tears at the sight of the wedding gown.

Cheryl grabbed Cassandra’s hand that was fluttering emotionally in midair and nodded. “Oh, honey, it really does look more gorgeous every time you put it on.”

Bree grimaced. “It’s just so much money to spend on a dress that I’m only going to wear once. That’s just so impractical. Why would I do this?”

It went against every instinct Bree had to be impractical. She was nothing if not logical, orderly and pragmatic.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “It’s your wedding dress. It’s supposed to be impractical. Because if you do it right, you only do it once. Because you deserve to wear a beautiful gown walking down the aisle. And besides, it’s really not that much for a wedding dress. Most gowns cost five times that much.”

Bree just stared at herself in the three-way mirror. She had to admit, it was a beautiful, elaborate dress. It made her waist seem trimmer, and her hips, which had filled out to a much more feminine shape over the last few months since she was eating regularly and not on the run for her life, flared nicely under the material.

But it was too fancy. Too much lace. Too many sequins. Too much of that itchy white stuff. It was a gorgeous gown, but it just wasn’t her. She shouldn’t have let herself be talked into it, but Cheryl and Dan—the people who had taken her in when she first arrived in Risk Peak basically living out of her car—had insisted on buying her a gown. Then Bree had made the mistake of taking Cassandra and a group of their friends shopping with her for one.

She’d put this gown on in the dressing room with the associate’s help and then almost taken it back off again. It was too fancy. But the damned associate had talked her into showing it to her friends.

There was so much crying and cursing from her friends when they saw the dress, Bree figured they must know something she didn’t. And when it came to dresses, that was a lot. So she’d gotten it.

And it was still just as beautiful. She couldn’t deny that.

Plus, if she was honest, she could admit it wasn’t really even the dress that had her in such a tizzy. It was the fact that in two weeks she was going to have to stand up in front of over five hundred people—that was more people than she’d ever talked to in her entire life combined—and say her vows to Tanner. Vows they’d agreed to personalize and write themselves.

If Bree speaking in front of a huge group of people about her emotions wasn’t a recipe for disaster, she didn’t know what was. The elegant bride in the beautiful dress looking back at her from the mirror broke out into a sweat at the thought.

She’d been engaged to Tanner for seven months. In love with him since almost the first moment she’d met him months before that. But she was only just now getting to the point where she could make coherent sentences about her emotions directly to him alone. He didn’t seem to mind when she stuttered over words or blurted out often socially inappropriate declarations. He took it in stride and had learned how to “speak Bree fluently,” as he called it.

But it wouldn’t be just Tanner at the wedding in two weeks. It would be a bunch of people who didn’t speak Bree fluently. She was going to make a complete fool out of herself and embarrass him. She already knew it. And didn’t see any way to get around it.

“Hey, do you really not like it that much? You look gorgeous.” Cassandra made eye contact with Bree in the mirror as she peeked over her shoulder.

“No, it’s not the dress.” Not just the dress, although the dress was pretty much an icon for the fraud Bree felt like. “It’s the whole wedding. I’m just not good at this stuff, you know that.”

Cassandra grinned. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come in the last few months. Think about what we’ve done with New Journeys.”

Cheryl smiled her encouragement too. “A far cry from that exhausted woman who fell asleep at the diner table over a year ago.”

The seamstress came in and positioned Bree’s arms to do the pinnings for the final fitting. Cassandra was right in a lot of ways. When Bree moved here a year ago, she’d barely known how to talk to anyone. Now she was helping run a very successful women’s shelter program. It had grown so big that a few months ago they’d had to move into a larger facility.

“New Journeys still doesn’t mean I’m not going to make a complete idiot out of myself in front of the town during the ceremony.” Bree spun in the opposite direction when the seamstress motioned for her to do so. “Good thing we’re not going to split the aisles between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. My side would be so empty we might tip over the whole church.”

Bree’s only family was her cousin Melissa. She and her husband, Chris, and their twin nineteen-month-olds were coming, and Bree was so thrilled to see the babies that had first brought her and Tanner together. But it still didn’t make up for the fact that Tanner had been born and raised in Risk Peak and knew half the residents of Grand County personally.

Cassandra shook her head. “You know people here love you. Mom would probably sit on your side. I definitely would. We both like you better than Tanner anyway.”

Bree laughed as the seamstress finished her pinning and began to carefully take off the lovely gown. Cassandra was right—the people in Risk Peak cared about her. She needed to remember that.

And try to live through her own wedding.

An hour later, Bree and Cassandra were pulling up to the three-story office building on the outskirts of Risk Peak that had been converted into apartments and bedrooms for the shelter. The stress from the wedding planning and dress fitting melted away when Bree saw it. This place gave her purpose. This place made a difference in women’s lives.

Bree knew what it was like to live in fear and feel like she had no options. If she could help take that same heavy sense of despair from another woman, she would gladly do it. She’d been teaching computer skills to the women at New Journeys for the past seven months; Cassandra offered training in basic cosmetology for those interested in that route.

Cassandra and Bree walked in the main front door that opened into the hallway and expansive living room of New Journeys. The living room was giant—they’d deliberately knocked out a number of walls when they remodeled the place to give the room a wide-open feel. A television sat in one corner with a couch and a couple of chairs around it. A second corner had been turned into a giant reading nook, with books of every kind and for every age. The other end of the room held a table with a half-completed jigsaw puzzle and board games stacked on a corner shelf.

This was the family room, even for the people here, many of whom struggled to understand what a family was supposed to feel like. Family was another concept Bree hadn’t understood very well before meeting Tanner and coming to live in Risk Peak.

She hung her lightweight jacket on a wall hook and looked around. Even May in Colorado could be cool. Everything was as it should be—loud and relaxed. Women talking, kids laughing, the TV on in the background, the dog running around in circles after its own tail. Late afternoon tended to be a boisterous time around here.

“Bree Cheese!”

Bree smiled at the sound of the two small voices calling her name from the table and chairs over in the corner. It was one of her favorite sounds in the entire world.

Sam and Eva, seven and five years old respectively, were the two children of Marilyn Ellis. They’d lived here for four months with their mom.

Marilyn had been Bree’s best computer student to date. Even though the woman hadn’t graduated from high school, nor gone to college, she picked up the computer classes Bree taught with the ease of a natural.

And had also become one of Bree’s good friends to the point that she was even going to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. Little Eva was going to be the flower girl.

“You guys should let Miss Bree get in the door before you start screaming your heads off for her,” Marilyn admonished softly. Marilyn did everything softly. In the four months Bree had known her, she had never once heard the other woman raise her voice.

Bree didn’t know everything about Marilyn’s situation before she arrived in Risk Peak, but she knew her husband had put her in the hospital and was now awaiting trial. Marilyn and the kids had been some of the first residents at New Journeys. And when they’d opened the new facility, Marilyn had agreed to take a full-time job as the building facilitator and sort of den mom.

She excelled at it.

“Of course I want to see these two as soon as I come in the door.” Bree pulled the kids in for a hug. “Who wouldn’t want a squad of rug rats chanting their name first thing?”

And it was true. To see how Eva and Sam were blossoming made it worth any possible crazy name the kids might call her. Including Bree Cheese, which had been the compromise between them calling her Bree the way she had wanted, and Miss Daniels, the way Marilyn wanted.

“Schoolwork, you two. Got to make sure you’re ready for next week’s camping trip.” Marilyn pointed back to the table. The kids moaned and tromped forward like they were headed to the guillotine.

Bree laughed at their dramatics, delighting in it. Just a few months ago they would’ve never acted that way. “Their teacher must be pretty mean.”

Marilyn gave a small smile. She was their teacher since she’d decided to teach them at home for the rest of this school year rather than add the trauma of a new school to an already traumatic year. “They’re so excited about the camping, I can hardly get an hour’s worth of work out of them.”

“Understandable.” Bree smiled once more.

“Everything okay here while we were gone?” Cassandra asked.

“Nothing of particular interest. That pipe in the hall bath is still leaking a little.”

“And no word about Jared?” Bree asked softly.

Marilyn flinched at the sound of her estranged husband’s name before smoothing her features. “Nothing either way.”

Jared’s lawyer was trying to get him out on bail, something Marilyn definitely didn’t want happening.

“Okay, good.” Bree nodded. “Keep us posted.”

“I will. Although finding out details isn’t easy. Ironically, because of privacy issues.” Marilyn sighed softly and looked over at Eva and Sam. “The kids are sad that Chandler is gone.”

Bree met Cassandra’s eyes and then looked at Marilyn, all of them giving resigned nods. Chandler’s mother, Angel, had been here three weeks. Two days ago, she’d decided to move back in with her boyfriend, despite the violent situation that had originally caused her to leave in the first place.

Angel said her boyfriend had changed. Had made promises.

Bree didn’t know which was harder: seeing the hope in the other woman’s eyes or knowing that the chances her boyfriend had changed after multiple years of abuse were pretty nonexistent.

And poor Chandler was caught in the middle of it all.

It wasn’t the first time someone from New Journeys had decided to return to a less than optimal situation. It had taken both Bree and Cassandra quite a bit of time to come to grips with the fact that not everyone could make the permanent break from their abusive situations. For some, the unknown was harder to deal with than the pain.

But it still sometimes broke Bree’s heart.

All they could do was provide what they could: a safe place and a new set of skills so that these women could support themselves, get back up on their feet and move on with their lives.

People like Marilyn were a prime example of why places like New Journeys was needed. She had made a huge difference in her own life once she had just a little help. But it was also needed for people like Angel who found the steps so much more difficult to take.

Bree and Cassandra grabbed cups of coffee, and they all came back into the family room to chat about all the daily things that needed tending to here. Half the building still hadn’t been renovated yet. New Journeys had quite a bit of private funding thanks to the Matarazzo family, who worked with some law enforcement group named Omega Sector in Colorado Springs, but renovating everything at once would have been too much to handle on multiple levels.

They currently had sixteen residents in the building, about three-quarters of its current capacity, and roughly one-third of what the building would be able to house once all the renovations were finished.

New Journeys had gone out of their way to make themselves particularly welcoming to women with children, so over half of the residents now had children with them—babies up through middle-school age.

Which explained the noise level in the room right now. None of the three women paid much attention to it. Cassandra and Marilyn were used to it since they had their own kids, and Bree just loved the chaos of it all.

But when the room fell almost completely silent a few moments later she sadly knew what had happened. A man had walked into the room. Bree forced herself not to tense or turn around to see who it was. How she reacted would influence how everyone else reacted.

Cassandra winked at her—able to see who was in the doorway—and a half smile pulled at Bree’s face as she heard giggles a few moments later. She knew exactly what man had walked into the room.

Hers.