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