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“So what do I think?” Gage repeated her question. He thought he’d been punched in the gut. The minute he’d opened the door and seen her—sparkling like a vision in white—all his breath had left his lungs. His chest burned, his ribs ached. He felt like he was getting the life pounded out of him all over again.
Her usually honey-toned skin was pale except for the dark circles beneath her enormous eyes. With her sharp cheekbones, small pointed chin and wide dark eyes, she appeared fragile—vulnerable. He knew she was tougher than she looked, though. She’d been tough on him when she’d broken up with him. Then she swayed on her feet, as if she were about to faint.
Instinctively, he reached out to catch her, closing his hands around her waist. She was thinner than she’d been when he’d seen her last. Maybe she was one of those brides who’d been starving herself to fit into her gown, to look good for her wedding photos and her groom. Maybe that was why she trembled in his grasp.
From starvation…
He preferred the sexy curves she’d had over her new svelte figure. She’d been perfect as she was.
Her breath escaped in a gasp. “You’re real…” she murmured. “You’re alive…”
As he realized what she’d thought, he chuckled. “You’re not seeing a ghost.”
“I thought—everyone thought—that you died in Afghanistan.”
“I was presumed dead,” he said, “but I was just missing.” Missing everyone back home, but most especially her. She had obviously not been missing him at all, though. She’d been dating, getting engaged.
Anger coursed through him, making him shake like she was. His hands tightened around her tiny waist. “So what do I think,” he mused again. “I think you make a beautiful bride, Megan Lynch.”
He had once planned on asking her to be his; he’d even bought the ring. But he had never gotten the chance to give it to her before she’d broken up with him, before she’d broken him.
She flinched as if he’d insulted her. But she’d never been able to accept a compliment as anything but a lie. She’d actually accused him of lying to her, of using her.
His blood heated. This was why he couldn’t protect her—because he wanted to hurt her—like she had hurt him, like her marrying another man was hurting him all over again. “So let me be the first to kiss the bride…”
He gripped her small waist and dragged her up so her feet dangled above the floor. She gasped in shock, her breath whispering across his lips as he lowered his mouth to hers. Her lips were as soft as he remembered, her taste as sweet. He had missed this so much. He’d missed her. He deepened the kiss. Pressing his lips tightly against hers, he slid his tongue into her mouth.
A moan rumbled in her throat. And her hands clasped the back of his head, her fingers sliding over his short hair. She stilled as she touched one of the scars. Those wounds hadn’t hurt, though, at least not in comparison to what she’d done to him.
Remembering the pain she’d caused him, he dragged his mouth from hers. Then he lowered her until her feet touched the floor again. When he released her, she swayed and her palm pressed against his chest. His heart leaped beneath her touch, and she must have felt it because she jerked her hand away.
“Gage,” she murmured, and she stared up at him as if she still couldn’t believe he wasn’t an apparition. Then her gaze scanned him, over the tuxedo he was wearing, the damn bow tie choking off his breath.
“Why are you here?” She looked both fearful and hopeful, and he realized what she thought.
A chuckle of bitterness slipped through his lips. “Don’t worry,” he assured her, “I’m not here to stop the wedding.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked.
“I work for a security firm now,” he said. “The Payne Protection Agency. Penny hired me to make sure nothing stops this wedding from happening.” Actually, he suspected just the opposite—that she had imagined some romantic reunion between him and Megan. Since she was a wedding planner, she probably believed in romance and happy endings and all that stuff Gage had given up on nearly a year ago.
There would be no happy ending for him.
Like she had so many times before, Penny tugged the dress over Nikki’s head and zipped her into it. “Thank you, honey, for helping me out.”
Nikki grimaced. Like she had a choice…
Like anyone could say no to Penny Payne. Even Gage Huxton hadn’t been able to, and he could have come up with more excuses than Nikki had.
Her small hands gripping Nikki’s shoulders, Penny spun her around to face her. “You look beautiful.”
After having three boys, Penny must have been very happy to finally have a girl so she could dress her up like a doll. But having three brothers, Nikki hadn’t wanted anything to do with dresses or dolls. She’d wanted to play the sports her brothers had played. She’d wanted to wrestle and fight. She couldn’t do that in the dresses Mom had constantly tried to zip her into then—or now.
“Mom…”
Penny’s palm cupped her cheek. “I know you don’t want to be, but you are beautiful.”
Her face flushed, but she couldn’t deny that she was beautiful—not without insulting her mother. She looked exactly like Penny.
“I want to be taken seriously,” she said. And that was hard when she looked like the doll her mother treated her like she was. She was petite and delicate looking with big heavily lashed eyes. And now her mother had zipped her into a blue satin dress so she looked like a curly auburn–haired Barbie doll.
“I want you to be happy,” Penny said.
“I am,” Nikki insisted.
But her mother just gave her a pitying smile. Penny didn’t think it was possible for Nikki to be happy unless she was all in love like her brothers were. Her brothers had been lucky to find their perfect mates. Nikki didn’t think there was anyone out there who would be perfect for her.
She’d once thought another man had been perfect—her father. Of course she only had a child’s memories of him, since he’d died when she was nine, so she’d idealized him. When she’d learned that he had cheated on her mother, Nikki had been more upset than Penny had been. Her mother had been able to forgive him. Nikki couldn’t.
Nor could she trust any other man.
“Well,” Nikki amended her statement, “I’m not happy to be here.”
“I appreciate your helping out,” Penny said.
“What happened?” Nikki asked. “Why did a bridesmaid get tossed out of the wedding party? Did she sleep with the groom?” And the stupid bride had forgiven him but disowned her friend?
Penny shook her head. “The matron of honor. She’s sick. Either food poisoning or…”
“Or? Regular poisoning?”
Penny laughed. “You’re hopeless. You’d rather think of the worst than the obvious.”
To Nikki, the worst was the most obvious. “What is the obvious?”
“She’s pregnant.”
Nikki groaned. Fortunately, she wasn’t as fertile as the women she knew, like her sisters-in-law and apparently the sick matron of honor. Of course she’d have to actually be involved with someone to have the possibility of becoming pregnant. And she wasn’t going to risk that again. She’d had boyfriends, even a fun fling or two. But despite what her mother thought, she didn’t need a husband or a family.
“And no one else could fill in for the sick matron of honor?” Nikki asked.
Penny shrugged. “I didn’t bother to find out.”
That wasn’t like the wedding planner who always went the extra mile to make sure the bride’s special day was extra special.
But then Penny always enlisted Nikki before any of her other kids to help out at the chapel. She’d probably expected her only daughter to go into the wedding planning business with her instead of into the bodyguard business with her brothers. Even before she’d learned of her father’s betrayal, Nikki had never had any interest in weddings.
“Is there any particular reason you want me to step in as maid of honor?”
“It’s because of the bride,” Penny said. “She’s Woodrow Lynch’s daughter.”
Woodrow? The first name basis caught Nikki by surprise. “Do you mean Chief Special Agent Lynch? Nick’s old boss?” Her half brother had been an FBI agent before he’d recently quit to join the Payne Protection Agency.
Her mother’s face flushed slightly, and she nodded.
How did that make this bride special? And she obviously was to Penny. Nikki had never seen her mother so worried about a wedding, not even the one she’d planned as a ruse to flush out a sadistic serial killer.
“Do you think she’s in danger?” Nikki asked. Had her mother enlisted her not as a dress-up doll to play wedding party but as a bodyguard?
Penny’s teeth nipped her bottom lip, and she nodded. “I have a feeling…”
Nikki’s blood tingled with excitement and nerves. Her mother’s feelings were legendary, because they were rarely wrong. If Penny Payne thought the bride was in danger, then Ms. Lynch was definitely in danger.
Megan was scared. Even though she lived a relatively boring life as a school librarian, she knew fear well. She had been very frightened when she’d broken up with Gage. She’d had a horrible feeling then that she was making a mistake. And when he’d reenlisted and been immediately deployed…
She’d been scared out of her mind that something would happen to him. Even worse, he’d gone missing and had been presumed dead…
She had nearly lost her mind. She wasn’t that scared now, because she knew what she had to do. She was going to thwart Gage’s assignment. There was no way she was going through with this wedding.
Minutes ticked away on the clock hanging on the yellow wall of the bride’s dressing room. She was still alone inside—although she didn’t feel alone anymore. While Gage had been gone for long moments, his presence was palpable in the room, which was another reason she needed to leave it. She needed to find the groom’s dressing room and tell him that she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t marry him.
She shouldn’t have accepted Richard’s proposal in the first place. While he was okay that she wasn’t in love with him, she wasn’t. As he had convinced her, it was safer to marry someone you didn’t love. There was no chance of getting your heart broken. But then there was no chance of passion, either. She’d had that passion with Gage.
While she’d had boyfriends before—Richard and a couple of high school boys before him—she’d never felt the passion she had with Gage. Only with Gage…
The first moment she’d met him—during a Super Bowl party at her father’s house—she’d been overwhelmed by attraction.
He was tall, with broad shoulders and heavily developed muscles. He had looked like a gym rat—then. But not now…
While he’d looked good—damn good—in the black tuxedo, he’d also looked thinner than Megan had ever seen him. What had he endured throughout those long months he’d been missing?
She wanted to know. Most of all she wanted him every bit as much as she’d wanted him that day they’d first met. When she’d closed the refrigerator door to find him leaning against the side of it, she’d thought he was big then, towering over her.
But he wasn’t just big physically.
It was his personality that was so big. His voice carried to the point where she’d been able to hear him above the other men gathered in the family room around her father’s enormous TV. She and Ellen had bought him that TV for Mother’s Day because he’d been both mother and father to them. She’d been invited to sit around that TV, too, but she’d been too shy to join the group of rowdy guys to whom her father had introduced her when she’d come home from a short and boring date with Richard.
Gage Huxton was the rowdiest with his booming voice and his even louder laugh. Or maybe he was the one she heard because he was the one she’d thought the most handsome with his golden-blond hair and smoky green eyes.
She’d never seen a more beautiful man. And, thanks to her father being bureau chief, she’d met some good-looking guys over the years. But they had never noticed her; they’d never sought her out like Gage had in the kitchen.
“Do you need something?” she’d asked him. “More beer?” Her father had a bar in the family room, but the fridge was small. With that many guys, they had probably already emptied it.
He’d shaken his head. “No.”
“Food?” she’d asked.
Her father was an excellent cook. He’d had to be, or they would have starved. But maybe he hadn’t made enough for the number of guys who’d showed up at their house.
Gage had shaken his head again. And there’d been something in his eyes, a wicked glint that had had her pulse racing.
“Then what do you need?” she’d asked.
He’d stepped closer then, so close that he’d towered over her, until he’d leaned down. His mouth tantalizing close to hers, he’d murmured, “You…”
She’d laughed at him then because she’d thought he was just trying to be funny. Because men like him, men that beautiful, were never interested in girls like her. Chubby girls with unmanageable hair.
“I’m not kidding,” he’d told her.
She’d laughed harder then, though it had sounded high-pitched and a little hysterical. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Dump him.”
“Why would I do that?” she’d asked.
“Because of this…” And then he’d kissed her. For the very first time in her life she’d experienced real passion. Her flesh had heated. Her heart had pounded so hard and so fast. Other parts of her had reacted, too—like her nipples tightening. Like the pulse that beat in her core, throbbing as pressure built inside her.
She’d never felt anything like it before. She’d felt it every time he’d kissed her or even looked at her. She’d felt it just moments ago when he’d kissed her.
She had never had that passion with Richard, and she never would. No. She couldn’t marry him. This wedding was not going to happen.
She had to tell him. Now. Before the wedding began…
She lifted her arms and tried to reach the buttons behind her back. They were too small, though. Penny Payne had buttoned her up before the beautician had arrived. And even she had had to use some kind of tool, which she’d taken with her. Megan couldn’t get out of her dress alone. Of course Ellen still wasn’t there.
Her sister was beyond late now. Maybe she didn’t intend to show up at all. She hadn’t agreed with Megan marrying Richard. A loving and biased older sister, Ellen was convinced that Megan could do better. She wasn’t a Richard fan. She had been a Gage fan.
But they had thought Gage was dead…
She cursed and gave up the struggle with her dress. It wasn’t as if seeing her in it would give her and Richard bad luck in their marriage. They weren’t getting married. She’d hoped to slip out of the room and across the church unnoticed. If she wasn’t wearing the huge dress Richard had designed and made for her, she wouldn’t have been noticed at all. People rarely looked at her. And no man had ever looked at her like Gage had.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached for the knob and pulled open the door. And fear washed over her all over again.
She wasn’t afraid of telling Richard she wasn’t going to marry him. She was afraid of the gun pointed at her—afraid that it might go off and bore a hole right through that wedding dress and through her.
Of course she’d already had a hole inside her—where she’d lost her heart to Gage.
Now she was about to lose her life…
Chapter 3
Once Gage had realized who the bride was, he hadn’t thought about the rest of what Penny Payne had said. He hadn’t believed then that the bride could be in any danger aside from making a mistake.
She’d made her biggest mistake nearly a year ago. Or maybe it had been before that, when she’d let him kiss her that first time.
Maybe that had been the mistake she’d made.
Gage had nearly made one himself. He’d started to leave the church. Again.
He’d started leaving once after he’d refused Penny’s assignment. But he hadn’t been able to walk past the bride’s dressing room without looking inside to see Megan. That had been a mistake, seeing her in that sparkling white gown.
Now he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. He’d thought stepping outside would help him clear his head. But he’d been seeking not just fresh air but also an escape. Six months of captivity had made that his first instinct. He’d had no intention of going back inside, either. He’d endured enough torture. Watching Megan marry another man would have been him torturing himself.
He couldn’t do it.
But he couldn’t leave, either.
Not when he noticed the guns.
They were discreet with them. A man dressed like a waiter carried one in his duffel bag. Another man, dressed like a guest, carried one beneath the trench coat he wore over his suit. There was a woman, too, with a purse that was big and—from the bulge inside it—heavy.
Heavily armed…
After Gage had realized who the bride was, he’d thought Penny’s claim about her being in danger had just been a ploy, a manipulation, to enlist him as the bridal bodyguard. But Penny hadn’t been lying about Chief Woodrow Lynch. He had a lot of enemies, maybe even more than Gage.
And if those enemies wanted to hurt him, they would go after his daughter. Megan was the one with whom Woodrow had always had the most special bond, and he was so protective of her. So if his enemies really wanted to get to him, they’d go after Megan.
She wasn’t his only family at the church, though. A minivan pulled up front and parked between the catering van from which the armed waiter had stepped out, and the long black car from which the armed wedding guests had exited. The side door slid open, and three little blond girls tumbled out. They were dressed in miniature versions of Megan’s lacy white dress. The sunlight sparkled off the rhinestones, but they didn’t seem to shine quite as brightly as Megan’s.
Megan sparkled. But it wasn’t just the dress. It was her eyes—those fathomless dark eyes—and her heart-shaped face.
God, she was beautiful.
She couldn’t see it herself, though. She had no idea what she actually looked like. Whenever she looked in the mirror, she still saw the chubby girl from her adolescent years with the bad complexion and glasses. Gage had only seen that girl in old photos. There was nothing of her left in Megan the woman.
One of the little girls looked like Megan must have when she was chubby—with rosy, round cheeks. The little girl was cute. She was also heading toward the church, her sisters running after her. Gage didn’t want them any closer to the danger. He rushed down the stairs to head them off.
“Wait, girls,” he said. “Wait for your parents.”
“My aunt Meggie’s getting married,” one of the girls told him.
No, she wasn’t. Now Gage had a reason to stop the wedding. He just hoped he had time. No way could he let Megan’s nieces get inside the church. “You have to wait out here,” he told them.
The chubby one shook her head. “We’re late. Mommy made us late.”
The man who stepped from the driver’s side hurried after his daughters. “Don’t let them inside,” Gage warned him. “Get them down here.”
While he’d dated Megan, he’d met her brother-in-law. With a headstrong wife like Ellen, Peter was used to doing as he was told. He corralled his kids while his wife came around the front of the van. Her eyes widened when she saw Gage, and a little scream slipped out between her lips.
He hurried toward her. “Ellen, shh…”
He didn’t want her drawing the attention of the armed arrivals. He also didn’t want her falling on her face, since she looked like death. Ellen was usually so vivacious, with rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes. Now she was paler than her light blond hair, and her eyes were dull. She swayed, and he caught her.
“You look as bad as I do,” she murmured.
“You should’ve seen me a few weeks ago,” he replied. He’d finally started to gain back some weight and muscle. And he’d managed to get some sleep.
“We should’ve seen you the minute you got back,” she said. “You’re not dead.”
“No.”
“Does Megan know?”
He nodded.
“So I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed to attend a wedding that’s not going to happen…” She leaned heavily on the front of the van.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“I thought it was the idea of my baby sister marrying that dweeb Richard that was nauseating me,” she replied. “Now I think it’s another pregnancy.” She shot a glare at her husband.
Gage had no time for congratulations or diplomacy. “You need to leave,” he said.
She sighed and admitted, “I would have liked to stay home. I fully intended to bail on my matron of honor duties. But Megan’s my only sister.”
Ellen had always treated her more like her oldest child than her sibling, though.
“She’s not getting married,” Gage assured her. “You can go back home. And take your family.”
She shook her head. “They want cake. Even if there’s no wedding, there is already food here.” She gestured toward that catering van.
Gage wasn’t so sure that they had brought anything other than weapons. He needed to find out. He also needed to call for backup bodyguards and police. But when he pulled his phone from the pocket, he found no signal. It would’ve been like Mrs. Payne to have some cell signal jammer so no ceremony would be interrupted in her church.
“And if there is no wedding,” Ellen continued, “there will be explanations to make.” She narrowed her blue eyes and stared up at him. “What’s the reason the wedding is canceled, Gage?”
He had no time for explanations, either. He just leaned closer and whispered, “Something’s going on, and you don’t want your family in the line of fire.”
Her eyes widened now, and her face paled even more. “My family is already in the line of fire,” she said. “My dad and baby sister are already in the church.”
Gage’s stomach lurched. He had to get them out—alive—before the gunmen made their move.
If they hadn’t already…
He had no time to drive far enough away that he could get a call out for backup. And he certainly had no time to wait for them to arrive. He had to get back into the church and make sure Megan wasn’t in danger.
Megan’s heart slammed against her ribs, and she backed up into the dressing room, trying to put distance between herself and the barrel of that gun. She raised her hands. “What do you want?”
The woman holding the gun was dressed in a navy blue bridesmaid’s dress. But she wasn’t one of Megan’s bridesmaids. She had never seen the woman before, although with her curly auburn hair and brown eyes, she looked familiar.
The gunwoman stepped inside the room and shut the door. As she did, she pointed her weapon toward that closed door.
Megan didn’t breathe a sigh of relief that it was no longer directed at her. Her breath was stuck yet in her lungs, burning.
“What do you want?” she asked the woman again. And why was she dressed like a bridesmaid? Megan didn’t have any besides her sister. She’d wanted to keep the wedding small, probably because she really hadn’t wanted one at all.
“I want to protect you,” the young woman replied.
“What are you?” Megan asked. “A bridesmaid or a bodyguard?”
“Bodyguard,” she replied quickly and emphatically.
“I already have one of those.” According to Gage, it was the only reason he was at the church. “And I don’t need that one.”
The young woman shook her head and tumbled those auburn curls around her delicately featured face. “Yes, you do.”