Buch lesen: «Bridegroom Bodyguard»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Someone put out a hit on Parker Payne.

The statement echoed inside Parker’s head, but it wasn’t the only echo. His ears rang yet from the blast of the explosion that had sent him to the hospital and two Payne Protection Agency employees to the morgue.

Guilt and pain clutched his heart. He was supposed to have been inside that SUV, not Douglas and Terry. But, totally unaware of the bomb that had been wired to the ignition, they had jumped inside his vehicle for a lunch run. He’d been rushing out to catch them to change an order, but he had been too late. Doug turned the key, and the SUV exploded into bits of glass and scraps of metal. Two good men died, leaving behind wives and children.

It should have been Parker. Not only did he have no wife or child to leave behind, but he was actually the one whom somebody wanted dead.

He fought against the pain and confusion of the concussion that had his head pounding and his vision blurred. So he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the conversation swirling around his hospital bed.

His mother fussed. “We should take this conversation into the hall so that Parker can get some rest.” Her fingers skimmed across his forehead, like they had when he’d been a little boy with a fever or a scraped knee or when his father died. She had always been there for her kids even though she hadn’t had anyone to be there for her.

He caught her hand and gently squeezed her fingers in reassurance. She had to be scared at how close she had come to losing a child. In the past two weeks, there had been several attempts on his brother Cooper’s life and on his twin Logan’s life. But most of those attempts had really been meant to end his life.

Logan bossed. “We need to find out who the hell put out the hit.” Then his tone turned suspicious, so he must have been addressing one of his new in-laws, when he added, “Unless you already know. Your contacts must have told you who when they told you about the hit.”

The guy cursed Logan, so he must have been the hotheaded Garek instead of the milder-mannered Milek Kozminski. “If I knew who the hell it is, I would have told you—the monster put my sister in danger.”

Parker forced open his eyes, but he had to squint against the glare of the overhead lights and the sunlight streaming through the blinds. His head pounded harder, but it was more with guilt than pain. Stacy Kozminski-Payne had been through a lot recently, most of it because of him. He focused on his new sister-in-law. The tawny-haired woman stood between her husband and her brother, as if ready to stop a brawl. It was probably a position in which she would find herself for most of her marriage.

But then his twin did something Logan rarely did; he apologized. “Sorry, man. I know you would do anything to protect your sister.”

Garek nodded in acceptance of the apology and continued, “The only thing I know for certain is that it’s somebody who has a lot of money and influence.”

“You and Milek need to reach out to all your contacts and see what you can find out.” Logan resumed his bossing. As CEO of Payne Protection Agency and the oldest Payne sibling by ten minutes, he’d gotten good at giving out orders.

But the Kozminskis weren’t known for taking orders well, so Parker waited for them to bristle. Instead Milek asked, “Are you really hiring us?”

Payne Protection Agency was a security firm that Logan had founded when he’d left the police department a few years ago. He’d coerced Parker into leaving the force, too, and joining him. Logan had always been very selective about who he hired—that was why Terry and Douglas had been such good men and their deaths such a tragic loss.

Through narrowed blue eyes, Logan studied his new brothers-in-law. Very new since he and Stacy had married only hours ago in Parker’s hospital room so that he could be Logan’s best man. “I need your help,” he said. And Parker knew his twin so well that he knew that wasn’t an easy admission for him to make.

Stacy knew her husband well, too, because she hugged him in appreciation and sympathy. And love. It was obvious how much she loved him. And Logan loved her just as much.

So much that Parker felt a pang of envy. God, he must have hit his head harder than he’d realized.

His arms winding around his wife, Logan continued, “We need to keep Stacy and Parker safe.”

And finally Parker managed to fight back the pain and gather his strength. He struggled to swing his legs over the bed and sit up. “This isn’t your fight, Logan,” he said. “It’s mine. So you’re not giving out the orders this time.”

He had never minded before that Logan was his boss as well as his brother, but he minded now—because he didn’t want his boss or his brother getting killed. “I’m not hiring Payne Protection. I can take care of this myself.” Now that he knew he was the intended target...

Logan turned to him as if surprised to find him still in the room. “Parker—”

“This is all about me,” he said. “And you need to be all about your new bride. You and Stacy need to leave for your honeymoon.”

Logan’s arms tightened protectively around his bride, but he shook his head. “I’m not leaving while you’re in danger.”

“That’s exactly why you have to leave,” Parker pointed out. “Because when I’m in danger, so are you.” With the same black hair and blue eyes and chiseled features, they were so identical that most people couldn’t tell them apart unless they knew them. Logan was always serious, and Parker was usually a smart aleck.

Logan shook his head. “That’s exactly why we need to all work together to find out who put out the hit on you.”

“Probably a jealous husband,” a male voice remarked as another man stepped into the hospital room.

“Cooper!” their mother exclaimed over her youngest son.

Even though he was two years younger than Parker and Logan, he could have been their triplet. He looked that much like them. “Damn it,” Parker grumbled. “You should still be on your honeymoon.”

And that was when it struck him that both his brothers were husbands now. Only he and his baby sister were single yet. And his mom. But she was widowed, so that was different.

He didn’t want his new sisters-in-law to become widows, too. “You need to take Tanya and get on a plane and get the hell out of here. And take Logan and Stacy with you.”

“Logan and Stacy?” Cooper stared at the woman wrapped up in his oldest brother’s arms, and his dark brows arched in shock. Logan and Stacy had spent the past several years hating each other before finally but quickly realizing that they actually loved each other. And they hadn’t come to that realization until Cooper and Tanya had left for their honeymoon.

“Parker is getting upset,” his mother said. “And he needs his rest. Maybe having Logan and Stacy’s wedding in his room was too much for him—”

“Wedding!” Cooper interjected.

Their mother shushed him. “You all need to take the explanations and orders into the hall.” Her tone had grown sharper and her usually warm brown eyes were dark with concern and determination.

Her children and even the Kozminskis hurried to obey her, nearly bumping into each other in their haste to step out into the hall. She gently pushed Parker back against the pillows. “The doctor is keeping you overnight for observation,” she reminded him, which was probably good since the concussion had affected his short-term memory. “So you really need to rest.”

“Mom—”

“You’ll need all of your strength to fight with your brothers,” she said, dredging up the argument she had used when he’d been a kid reluctant to go to bed. She kissed his forehead before joining the rest of their dysfunctional family in the hall.

Finally Parker was alone. He was also exhausted. But when he closed his eyes, the explosion played out behind his lids. He saw the men through the windshield—just briefly—before the glass shattered and the metal shredded and their bodies...

With a groan of horror and pain, he jerked awake and discovered that he was no longer alone. A woman stood over his bed. She wasn’t a nurse—at least not one employed at the hospital—because she didn’t wear the green scrubs. She wore a suit with tan pants and a high-necked blouse beneath a loose tan jacket. So he might have thought she worked in hospital administration if not for the baby she balanced on one lean hip.

“You’re Parker Payne,” she said.

He tensed with suspicion. Why did she want to know? Then he pushed aside the suspicions. It wasn’t as if she was trying to collect on that hit—unless hired assassins brought their babies along with them, too.

And if they did, he would rather she try to hit him than Logan or Cooper. “Yes, I’m Parker Payne.”

She released a shuddery breath of relief. “You’re not dead.”

“Not yet.” But it wasn’t for want of people trying.

She shuddered. “I saw on the news what happened to you—or nearly happened to you. It was your vehicle...”

“I’m fine,” he said with a twinge of guilt at the unfairness of that. Doug and Terry should be fine, too, but they were gone, leaving family behind just like Parker had been left when his police-officer father died in the line of duty.

At least if someone was actually successful at carrying out the hit, he wouldn’t leave a child behind to mourn him like he had mourned. His family and friends thought he stayed single because he couldn’t commit, because he was a playboy. But he was practical. Given the dangerous nature of his job, he wasn’t a good risk for a husband or father. And he didn’t want to put anyone through the pain he, his mother and siblings had suffered.

The woman studied him through narrowed eyes. Even narrowed, her eerie light brown eyes were so huge that they nearly overwhelmed her thin face. If her hair was down, the caramel-colored locks might have softened her face, but it was pulled tautly back and bound in a tight knot on the top of her head. Her voice low and soft, she asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

He shook off his maudlin thoughts. He wasn’t going to leave anyone behind because he wasn’t going to die—at least not before he found out who was after him and made that person pay for all the pain he’d caused. Parker had rested long enough, so he swung his legs over the bed again and sat up. His vision blurred for a moment, but he blinked to clear it.

“Should I get someone?” she asked as she backed up toward the door. She jostled the baby on her hip, and the little thing giggled.

Parker focused on the baby. Dressed in tiny overalls and a blue-and-green-striped shirt, he was apparently a boy. With fuzzy black hair and bright blue eyes, he was also damn cute.

“You know who I am,” he realized. “But I don’t know who you are. Should I?” He usually never forgot a face—at least not a female one. But she wore no makeup and dressed so frumpy that she wasn’t exactly the kind of woman he usually noticed...unless he was in the mood for the repressed-librarian type. And maybe he was in the mood now because he was tempted to see what she would look like with her hair down...

“My name is Sharon Wells,” she told him, her soft voice questioning as if she wondered if he remembered it.

As if he should...

He moved his head to shake it, but even the slight movement sent pain radiating throughout his skull. He groaned.

“I should get someone,” she said again with a nervous glance toward the hall. “You need help.”

“No.” He already had too many people trying to help him, trying to fix a problem he must have somehow created himself. The hit was on him—no one else. Who had he pissed off enough to want him dead?

Cooper was wrong about the jealous husband. Parker had never messed around with a married woman and never would; there were lines even he refused to cross.

“I don’t need anyone,” he said.

Now she glanced down at the baby she bounced gently on her hip. His arms flailed, and his chubby little face flushed with happiness. Even though they looked nothing alike, it was as if the child was a part of her because they were so connected.

“Sharon Wells...” He repeated her name but it didn’t sound familiar even on his own lips. She wasn’t Doug’s or Terry’s wife; he knew their names, their faces, which he would never be able to look at again without a rush of guilt and shame. If Sharon Wells was a relative of one of them, she must’ve been a distant one, because he’d met most of their families, too.

He pushed up from the bed and stood on legs that were embarrassingly shaky until he locked his knees. He wasn’t staying overnight in the hospital, not when he had a killer to track down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”

She sighed. “I hoped you would, that you might...”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because it would’ve made this easier if you were expecting me,” she replied.

Expecting her? He hadn’t been expecting anything else—not the bombs or the shootings to be meant for him. Why would he have expected her?

“Make what easier?” he asked.

Was she a hit woman? A hired assassin?

He glanced around for his holster and weapon, but they, like his clothes, were nowhere in sight. Neither was any of his family.

He’d thought they weren’t going to leave him alone...

“What I have to tell you,” she said. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and continued, “That this is your son.”

He focused on the baby again. The little guy had fuzzy black hair and very bright blue eyes. The kid looked exactly like old baby pictures of him and Logan and Cooper. The baby certainly could have been a Payne. He could have been Parker’s...

Maybe he did need longer to recover from the concussion because standing was so much of a strain that his head grew light, and his knees gave out. His already banged-up body struck the floor. Hard. The last thing he heard, before oblivion claimed him, was her scream.

Chapter Two

She shouldn’t have screamed, but his falling was such a shock that it slipped out. And started a commotion. Ethan screamed, too—his was high-pitched and bloodcurdling as he reacted to her fear. And people rushed into the room.

These were the people she had passed in the hall, the people posted like guards outside his room. But given the police reports she had seen about the explosion and the previous attempts on his brothers’ lives, she understood the need for security. Yet they had all let her just walk past them. They had asked her no questions; they had only stared...at Ethan, their eyes round with shock.

They had immediately known what it had taken Parker much longer to realize—that she carried his son.

“What did you do to him?” one of his brothers angrily asked her as he crouched next to Parker on the floor. He looked so much like him that he could have been a twin. There were two men that good-looking in the world? It wasn’t fair.

Then a third one rushed forward to help lift Parker back onto the bed. Were they actually triplets? This man’s black hair was shorter—in a military brush cut, but other than that he looked so much like the other two it was uncanny. And Ethan looked like a miniature version of all of them. He must have been the spitting image of what they had looked like as babies.

Parker shrugged off his brothers’ helping hands and stood up again, steadily, as if his strength had already returned. And given the way his heavily muscled arms stretched the sleeves of his hospital gown, he was strong.

“I’m all right,” he assured his concerned family. “I just tried to get up too fast.”

An older woman tore her concerned gaze from Parker to stare at the baby. “Or was it the shock?” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for one of Ethan’s flailing chubby fists. When she touched him, he calmed down, his howls trailing away to soft hiccups. “Of finding out you’re a daddy?”

Parker shook his head then flinched at the motion. “Mom,” he exclaimed with shock and exasperation. “I am not a daddy.” He glanced at one of his brothers. “Is he yours?”

Of the group of people who’d rushed back into the room, a tawny-haired woman laughed while a blond-haired man snorted derisively.

Parker’s brother’s eyes widened in horror, and he glanced from Ethan to her. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“Neither have I.”

Sharon flinched. They had met a few times, albeit a while ago. How did he not remember her at all?

“You took one heck of a hit on the head,” his brother reminded him. “The doctor said you might have some memory loss because of the concussion.”

“Short-term memory loss,” Parker clarified. “That means I might forget what happened minutes or hours ago, not months ago.”

Sharon should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t remember a woman like her. She had spent her life trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, so there was no wonder that so few people ever noticed her.

But then the older woman glanced up at Sharon, her brown eyes full of warmth and wonder. Her hair was auburn, with no traces of gray, so she didn’t look old enough to have three thirtysomething-old sons, let alone a grandson. “How old is he?”

“Nine months.”

Ethan turned back to her and reached up his free hand toward her hair. Because he loved to pull it, she always bound it tightly and high on the top of her head. But a tendril must have slipped out of the knot because he found something to yank, the fine hairs tugging on her nape. She flinched again over the jolt of pain.

Mrs. Payne chuckled. “The boys always pulled my hair, too,” she said. “May I hold him?” She held out her arms as she asked, and the baby boy leaned toward her, almost falling into her embrace.

Panic flashed through Sharon at how easily he had been taken from her. That was what would happen when these people learned the truth. She would be cut out of Ethan’s life as though she had never been a part of it.

“Mom.” Parker drew the older woman’s attention briefly from the baby she held with such awe. “Can you bring him out into the hall?” He turned toward the others. “And the rest of you leave with her. I need to talk to Ms. Wells alone.”

Sharon’s panic increased, making her pulse race. She lifted her arms to reach for Ethan, to take him back, but the woman was already walking out the door with the sweet baby. And Parker grabbed her outstretched arms, holding her back, as all the others left.

She hadn’t really been alone with him before. She’d had Ethan. Even though he was a baby, he had been protection from Parker’s wrath. He had to be furious. And he had every right to be. His son had been kept from him, and someone was trying to kill him.

But he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill.

* * *

HOURS BEFORE, the explosion had knocked Parker on his ass, literally. Sharon Wells’s announcement, that the baby was his son, had knocked him on his ass, as well, although he would have rather blamed it on the concussion. But he’d recovered quickly.

Sharon was the one trembling now, as he held her arms. A diaper bag hung heavily from one of her thin shoulders, bumping against her side. She stepped back and jerked free of his grasp; apparently she was stronger than she looked.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “This was a mistake....”

“Trying to pass that kid off as mine?” he asked. “That was a mistake.”

And why had she done it? What had she hoped to gain? If she had been hoping to force someone to marry her, Cooper or Logan would have been the better bet; they cared more about honor than he did. But, damn his short-term memory, they were already married.

“He is yours,” she insisted. She held his gaze, her strange light brown eyes direct and sincere. “You can get a paternity test to prove it. Since we’re at the hospital, maybe they can rush the results.”

He dropped his hands from her arms and stepped back. “You’re serious....”

“It’s just a cheek swab,” she said. “It won’t hurt him or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

Because she loved her son...

Their son?

He scrutinized her face. The women he usually dated wore makeup and dressed in clothes that flattered their figures. But with her enormous, unusual eyes and delicate features, she didn’t really need makeup. She was actually quite beautiful. And his pulse quickened as attraction kicked in, tempting him to see just what her figure was like beneath her baggy suit.

Because of those eyes and that face and his sudden attraction to her, he knew he’d never met her before—much less been with her.

“There is no way that I am the father of your baby,” he insisted. “I would not have forgotten you if we’d ever been intimate.”

He wasn’t the careless playboy everyone thought he was. He didn’t have a slew of conquests whose faces he couldn’t remember.

Her gaze dropped from his, and her face flushed. “But—but you have a concussion....”

He shook his head, and pain from making the motion overwhelmed him. But he kept his legs under him this time and remained conscious. And finally the confusion from the concussion receded, leaving him angry.

“There is no way that your child is mine.”

“Take the paternity test,” she urged him. “Ethan is your son.”

Like everyone else, she must have believed that he was such a playboy that he wouldn’t remember every woman he’d ever slept with, but his reputation was grossly exaggerated and mostly undeserved. Even with the women with whom he was involved, he always used protection. He couldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant. So she had to be playing some angle with him, running some scheme.

Why? That paternity test she was urging him to get would only prove him right. So was she just buying some time? Was she just trying to distract him? What did she hope to gain? Did she want to collect the payout for his murder? From what Garek Kozminski had said, it sounded like a substantial amount.

Maybe he needed to search that diaper bag and make certain that she didn’t have a weapon concealed. Or maybe a bomb. He reached for the strap of the bag, but his hand grazed her breast instead.

Her already enormous eyes widened with shock.

She wasn’t the only one surprised. Her baggy suit hid some curves. Parker was as intrigued as he was suspicious of her.

“What—what are you doing?” she asked, her voice all breathy and anxious.

“You’re trying to convince me that I made a baby with you and the concussion made me forget.” No wonder she had taken the opportunity to show up now after hearing the news reports about his condition. “The effects of this concussion aren’t going to last,” he continued.

She nodded, either in agreement or because she was humoring him.

How far would she go to humor him? And to further whatever her agenda really was? He wanted to find out. “My memory can be jogged,” he told her.

“I—I still don’t understand,” she stammered.

“Jog my memory,” he challenged her, as he cupped her shoulders and pulled her closer.

Her eyes widened even more as she stared up at him. “Me? You want me to jog your memory?” she asked. “How?”

“Kiss me.” But he didn’t wait for her to take his bait; he reeled her in first. He tipped up her chin and lowered his mouth to hers.

Instead of jogging his memory, the kiss proved to him that he had never kissed her before—because it was all new. The silkiness of her lips, the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she gasped. He took advantage of that gasp to deepen the kiss, to slide his tongue inside her mouth.

His pulse raced and his head grew light again, but he didn’t blame the concussion for that reaction. He blamed her. Because now she was kissing him back, her tongue sliding over his, her lips pressing against his. If her goal was just to distract him, she was doing a damn good job.

He skimmed his hands up her face to that frustrating knot on top of her head. And he tugged her hair free so that it tumbled down around her shoulders. When he had first seen her, he must have still been half-blind from the concussion. Because there was no other explanation for how he hadn’t realized how beautiful she was....

She was every bit as beautiful—maybe even more beautiful—than any other woman he had ever dated. But he’d never dated her before.

It wasn’t just the first kiss with her—it felt bigger than that. More monumental. It was as if the earth was shaking beneath his feet.

Or at least the building. The structure rumbled, and the windows rattled. There were no earthquakes in Michigan—so it had to be another explosion.

Someone had set a bomb inside the hospital? Someone was so desperate to kill him that they were willing to risk the lives of more innocent people?

Of this woman? And her baby?

Smoke alarms blared, but the warning was too late. The bomb had already gone off. How many people had been hurt? And would more people be harmed trying to escape the hospital?

The commotion in the hall was so loud that it affected his throbbing head. Voices rose in fear and confusion. Footsteps pounded as if people stampeded in their panic. He glanced toward the window that had rattled. Flames reflected back from the glass. Was it too late to escape?

Or were they already trapped?