Buch lesen: «Single Mum's Bodyguard»

Chapter 1

The crying awoke Emilia—as it always did. But it sounded as if it were coming from a great distance instead of just down the hall. Why did it seem so muffled?

She knew better than to put anything in the crib with the infant. She wouldn’t take any risk with him ever again. “Blue...” she murmured as she jerked fully awake.

Throwing back the blankets, she jumped from the bed and ran from her room, hitting her shoulder against the jamb as she exited. Pain radiated down her arm.

This was real. This wasn’t a dream like all the times before she’d heard that faint cry, when she had reached for her stomach, for her child—only to find her womb empty, her baby gone...

Except that hadn’t been a dream, either. That had been the horror she’d lived for weeks until she and her son had been rescued.

Her feet slipped on the hardwood floor as she hurried down the hall toward the bedroom on the other side of the bath. She banged into that jamb, too, while rushing into the nursery. A breeze rustled the wispy blue-and-white-striped curtains and rattled the blind pulled over the window.

The open window.

She hadn’t left that window open. She was always so careful to make sure that it was shut and locked. She wouldn’t have...

She could barely hear the crying now. It was far in the distance. “Blue...”

Was he gone, too?

Her legs trembled, nearly folding beneath her, as she walked toward the crib. Dread gripped her. She was afraid to look, afraid that it was happening all over again.

She had lost her little boy once. She couldn’t lose him again. Her hands shook and she wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the white-painted crib. And finally, she forced herself to look.

Her heart lurched, swelling with love, as it did every time she gazed upon her child. He lay on his side, his eyes closed, his little fist clenched as if he was ready to start fighting bad guys—just like his uncle.

Relief slipped from her lips in a long, shuddery breath. He was fine. Blue was fine, sleeping peacefully. There were no tears on his cheeks, which had finally begun to fill out. He looked happy and healthy.

And she’d thought she was, too, now that she had him back. But she could still hear the crying. Maybe it was coming from another house. But it hadn’t sounded that way when she’d first heard it. It had seemed to come from down the hall.

And it sounded that way again but now the direction had changed, as if it were coming from her room. She had cried herself to sleep a few nights, thinking of the mistakes she’d made, the mistakes that had nearly cost her Blue and her brother and the woman he loved and Emilia’s own life, as well.

She had almost lost everything. But thanks to her brother, Lars, and Nikki Payne and Lars’s friends, Blue was safe. Emilia was safe. She had lost nothing.

The sound of crying persisted. It sounded like Blue’s cry. But he was still asleep. She reached down for him, tempted to hold him and assure herself he was all right. As her fingers brushed across his back, he murmured and a soft sigh slipped through his rosebud-shaped lips.

He was too peaceful. Disturbing him would be selfish. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be that kind of parent, the one her father had been when he’d deserted his sick wife and kids.

No. She had to leave him alone, had to let him sleep. Most new parents would have been envious of how much her son slept. But she knew he did that because he hadn’t had anyone there for him those first few weeks of his life. He hadn’t had anyone that cared enough to come when he’d cried. And her heart broke over that, over knowing that she had already let down her son. She wouldn’t do it again.

She forced herself to step away from his crib. Along with the crying, the breeze reached her, stirring her nightgown as it did the curtains and the blind. Shivering, she lifted the blind and slid the window closed, locking it. As she did, she remembered checking that lock earlier—when she had first put Blue down in his bed. The window had definitely been closed and locked.

Who had opened it?

Lars wasn’t home. He’d moved in with Nikki nearly a week ago. Emilia had had to convince him that it was okay, that she would be fine without him.

But she wasn’t fine. She was scared. Someone must have been inside the house. Who and why?

Was someone after her baby again? She turned back toward the crib. She wanted to lift Blue from it, wanted to hold on so tightly to her little boy that no one could get him away from her—ever.

But she resisted that temptation. Instead she settled into the rocker recliner in the corner of the nursery. With that crying echoing inside her head, she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep anyway. She would sit vigil, watching her son to protect him.

But from what? If someone had unlocked and opened the window, they would have had to be inside the room. So why hadn’t they just taken Blue if he was what they really wanted?

She was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened. The adoption lawyer who’d stolen her baby was dead. To save Nikki, Lars had been forced to kill him. Myron Webber wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t taking her baby or anyone else’s.

Maybe his was the crying she heard—as he burned in hell. Maybe he was haunting her. What he’d done to her had certainly been haunting her. Maybe that was all it was: flashbacks and nightmares from what had happened.

Because why would someone break in only to open a window? It made no sense.

It made more sense that she had left it open, that she hadn’t locked it.

But that wasn’t the case. Was it?

Had she kept everything she’d thought she was losing only to lose her mind instead?

* * *

He must have lost his damn mind. That was the only reason Dane Sutton had for deciding not to quit the Payne Protection Agency. He’d been all set on turning in his resignation to Cooper Payne, his boss and a fellow former Marine. But Cooper had persuaded him to give the job a chance.

Yet it wasn’t the job Dane didn’t like: it was everything else that encompassed the Payne Protection Agency. Family. Romance. Love.

He had vowed long ago to have nothing to do with any of those things. He’d tried family once, although it hadn’t been his choice. Abandoned as an infant by a teenage mom who left him in a school bathroom, he’d been adopted by an older couple. But like his young mother, they had also realized they weren’t really interested in being parents. So because he’d had this example, Dane had no idea what a family was actually supposed to be.

He hadn’t liked what he’d witnessed with the Paynes. They interfered in each other’s lives and even in the lives of the people who worked for them. They tried to bring everyone into this family of theirs. He suspected it was probably more like a cult, though. He shuddered just thinking of it. It wasn’t safe for him to stay.

But something had compelled him to stick around River City, Michigan, and the Payne Protection Agency.

Friendship.

That, he was very familiar and comfortable with. The guys from his unit were his best friends. Now his boss and coworkers. He hadn’t been able to leave them behind during a mission. And he couldn’t leave them now.

But he would just have to be very, very careful he didn’t wind up like Lars, the blond giant of a man who was sitting beside him in a Payne Protection Agency vehicle, holding a ring over the console. Dane was behind the wheel of the black SUV.

“So tell me—what do you think?” the guy eagerly asked him, his pale blue eyes bright with something almost like giddiness.

Dane sighed. “You know I love you, man, but only as a friend. I gotta turn you down.”

Lars swung his free hand into Dane’s shoulder. The tap probably would have knocked a smaller man through the driver’s door, but Dane was nearly as big as his friend. “I’m damn well not proposing to you.”

“Phewww,” Dane said. “You made me nervous. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”

Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve given that speech a few times.”

“So have you,” Dane reminded him.

Lars hadn’t been any more eager for romance or love than Dane was. In fact, with his sister missing, falling in love had been the last thing on Lars’s mind.

Until he started at Payne Protection.

The security agency might guard people’s lives but they were hell on hearts.

Lars glanced down at the ring he held out, and for a second the brightness of his eyes dimmed. “Do you think she’ll give me that speech?”

Dane’s stomach tightened into knots. He hated this stuff, hated seeing his friend so anxious. Lars had already suffered enough when his sister had gone missing and been presumed dead. It would be so much worse for him if he were to be turned down now by the woman he loved. “Maybe you should wait. You two haven’t been together very long. And Nikki has made it clear she wants nothing to do with marriage.”

“With weddings,” Lars corrected him. “She doesn’t want a wedding.”

“What the hell’s the difference?” he asked as he fumbled with the bow tie at his neck. That damn thing was cutting off his circulation.

Lars snapped the case closed on the ring and reached across to adjust Dane’s tie. “This. The monkey suits, the dresses, the pomp and ceremony—this is the wedding. It’s one day. The marriage is the life.”

“So you think she’s fine with the life and just wants to skip the day?” Dane hadn’t always been the greatest at math but one day seemed a hell of a lot easier to get through than a lifetime.

Lars sighed wistfully. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

Dane couldn’t blow smoke and offer his friend false assurances. He always had to tell the truth—unless he’d been sworn to keep someone else’s secret. “That’s a hell of a risk you’re taking.”

“Proposing?” Lars asked. “What’s the worst that can happen? She can say no.”

Dane figured it was a bigger risk if she said yes. But he just shrugged.

“And if I’m late to her mother’s wedding, she’s sure to say no,” Lars said as he shoved open the passenger’s door. “We better get inside the chapel.”

Dane stepped out of the driver’s side and walked around the truck, but he hesitated before heading up the steep steps to the double doors of the little white chapel. His heart pounded slowly and heavily with dread in a chest that felt constricted in that damn tuxedo.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. “I get why you are. You’re dating the bride’s daughter. But why was I told I needed to attend?”

It hadn’t been an invitation. It had been a command.

Lars stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back toward him. “You haven’t heard about what happened the last time the bride and groom were in this chapel together?”

Dane shook his head. Unlike Lars, he was trying to keep his distance from the Paynes. He didn’t want to be sucked into their little family cult. He wouldn’t have even been here if Cooper hadn’t made it an assignment.

“The whole wedding party was taken hostage and the groom was shot and nearly died.”

Dane shuddered. “Talk about bad luck. Shouldn’t they have taken that as an omen and forgotten about trying to get married again?”

“Woodrow Lynch wasn’t the groom that day. He was the father of the bride,” Lars explained. “He’s also a former FBI chief who’s made a lot of enemies over the course of his career.”

Dane glanced at the other people, all dressed up, heading into the church. Could one of them be a threat? “So he thinks there might be another attempt to kill him?” He studied the people more carefully, looking for not so carefully concealed weapons.

Lars gripped his shoulder and drew his attention back to him. “It’s possible. That’s why I wish Emilia wasn’t working today.”

Dane froze. “Emilia?”

“Yeah, she works for Penny Payne,” Lars said, pulling his hand away to gesture at the church Penny had converted into her full-service wedding planning venue. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Dane had been trying to avoid any mention of Emilia. She had been the focus of his world for too many weeks when she’d been missing. That was why he’d been so fascinated with the photo Lars had given him to help find her. That was the only reason....

But why was his pulse quickening? Why could he feel his heart pounding faster and harder now?

“No...” Dane murmured but his reply wasn’t just for Lars. It was for himself. No.

He couldn’t see Emilia. He already saw her too much—every time he closed his damn eyes.

“She insisted on coming today,” Lars said, his voice gruff with frustration and concern. “She said it was the most important day for her boss and she wouldn’t miss it even though I tried to tell her it might not be safe.”

And Emilia had already been through so much. Dane understood his friend’s fear. Hell, he even shared it.

“Nikki was one of those hostages last time,” Lars said, his fear making his deep voice even gruffer. “She was nearly killed. So I’m going to need to keep an eye on her.”

“She’s going to hate that,” Dane reminded him. Nikki Payne was fiercely independent. There was no way she was saying yes to Lars’s proposal.

But before he could offer his friend any more advice, Lars continued, “So I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Emilia. You need to make sure nothing happens to her.” Lars’s brow was furrowed, his concern for his sister apparent.

Dane couldn’t refuse his request any more than he’d been able to ignore Cooper’s order to attend the wedding. Yeah, friendship had already caused him enough problems. He wanted nothing to do with family, romance or love.

“I also need you to talk to Emilia,” Lars said, “and make sure that, after everything she went through, she’s really okay.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?” Dane asked. “Myron Webber is dead. He can’t hurt her anymore.”

“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he’s not still hurting her,” Lars said. “She woke up with nightmares for weeks after we rescued her.”

“PTSD?” he asked.

Lars nodded. “I think so. But I never really experienced that myself. That’s why I need you to talk to her.”

“Why me?” Dane asked.

“I bunked next to you for months at a time,” Lars reminded him. “You have as many nightmares as she does.”

Dane tensed. “I don’t talk about that stuff...” Not with his friends. He certainly wasn’t going to talk to some young woman who already had enough nightmares of her own. “I can’t help her.”

Lars studied his face for a while before uttering a sigh of resignation. “Fine. Just watch out for her, make sure she doesn’t get any more nightmares from whatever the hell might happen here today.”

Just what kind of weddings did Penny Payne plan that people risked developing PTSD after them?

* * *

A lot of weddings had taken place in Penny Payne’s Little White Wedding Chapel. Some real. Some staged to flush out serial killers. Some hadn’t taken place at all. Brides had changed their minds. Or gunmen had taken the church hostage before the wedding was able to take place.

Penny wasn’t worried about this bride changing her mind. She stared at her reflection in the oval mirror in the bride’s dressing room.

Was it ridiculous that she wore a gown?

It wasn’t white. At fifty...something...and with four grown kids, that would have been ridiculous. But the tea-length, lacy bronze dress looked like a wedding gown. For the second time in her life, Penny was a bride.

Her first groom had been a boy. Together they’d grown up. And he had become a man—one who’d made mistakes. One mistake had brought a child into the world with another woman. One had gotten him killed.

She had survived both of his mistakes. But then she’d spent the next nearly two decades afraid of making a mistake of her own. So she’d focused on her kids and her business and she’d protected her heart—until that day she’d nearly lost her chapel to those gunmen.

Her kids—the ones she’d given birth to and the ones she’d claimed as hers—had saved everyone that day. But Penny had still lost something she had never intended to risk again.

Her heart.

But this groom she could trust. He wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Woodrow Lynch wouldn’t make mistakes that would hurt her. He loved her as much as she loved him.

No. She wasn’t going to back out and neither would Woodrow. Penny wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t even worried about all the minute details of a ceremony that she usually insisted on overseeing herself.

She didn’t need to do that anymore, not since she’d hired Emilia Ecklund. The beautiful blonde appeared next to her in the reflection in the mirror. She carefully pinned the tiny bronze lace veil onto Penny’s coif of auburn curls.

“You look so beautiful,” Emilia told her with such awe that Penny couldn’t doubt her sincerity. She was such a sweet, sincere young woman. “Everything’s ready.”

Penny’s heart lurched. Not with nerves over the marriage. She knew that would be good. But now a few doubts flickered in about the wedding details. Emilia had seemed kind of distracted the past few weeks. Penny opened her mouth to ask a couple of questions, just to confirm.

But Emilia shushed her with a smile. “Everything’s ready,” she repeated with calm assurance. There was not even a trace of nerves in her soft voice or on her beautiful face.

Penny believed her. Emilia had been about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in hospitality and event planning when her world had been turned upside down. After her rescue, she had been working hard to right her world again.

Maybe too hard.

Dark circles rimmed her pale blue eyes. Of course, she had an infant at home, too. New mothers rarely got enough sleep. That was probably why she’d seemed distracted lately.

Penny reached up and patted her cheek. “Thank you, Emilia, for making not just this day so special for me but for making my workload so much lighter since you started working for me.”

Emilia’s beautiful eyes glistened with unshed tears, but she blinked her long black lashes and cleared away the moisture. She smiled again, but it was as if she had to force up the corners of her mouth.

“Is everything all right?” Penny asked her.

“Yes, I told you it was,” Emilia replied. “We’re ready to start the ceremony. Are you ready?”

Penny sucked in a sharp breath. She was getting married again. She was pledging to share the rest of her life with another. She couldn’t wait. “Yes, please send my kids in here. I am raring to walk down the aisle to my groom.”

But as Emilia turned away to open the door, Penny caught her arm. The odd sensation raced over her—one of those god-awful premonitions she had that something was about to go very wrong.

Not today.

Of all days, not today...

“What is it?” Emilia asked. Alarm drained the color from her face. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“Definitely not,” Penny said. “I can’t wait to marry my soul mate. But...”

“I told you, everything’s fine.”

“I’m sure you did everything right,” Penny said. “But I have that feeling...”

Emilia sucked in a sharp breath now. Penny had told her about the feelings that came over her, about her instincts that warned her when something horrible was going to happen.

“I’ll double-check everything,” her assistant assured her. “Don’t worry.”

She hurried away before Penny could stop her.

Penny couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to Emilia. She hoped she was wrong. The young woman had already been through too much.