And, not to be underestimated when accounting for her peace of mind, it was a relief to be able to open her computer and know there weren’t going to be any venomous emails waiting for her. There was still a preponderance of emails to wade through during the course of each day, but she no longer had to worry whatever she opened was going to be painfully humiliating, or at the very least, hurtful.
Skimming through the list of that day’s new emails, Mirabella came to one that gave her pause. She didn’t recognize the sender, at least, she didn’t recognize the user name, but it was the subject line that had her suddenly wondering if someone else had taken up Kurtz’s dropped baton.
The line read: For Your Eyes Only.
Maybe it was just a sales pitch that had somehow managed to get through safeguards and firewalls, although she would have found it rather surprising. Meyer had been put in charge of the company’s internal communications system and she was fairly confident nothing got by the man.
Maybe this was a legitimate email dealing with a subject that needed to be kept confidential.
“Stop speculating and open the email. You know you’re never going to find out what it is until you open it, Belle,” she lectured herself.
Taking a breath, she tapped on the email. The screen opened and she read the communication.
You are cordially invited to participate in the nuptials of Zane Colton to Mirabella Freeman Colton. The ceremony will take place at Saint Luke’s Parish. The virtual invitation went on to name the date.
Mirabella read the email three times just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.
It was the same all three times.
Puzzled, confused, she pushed her chair back from her desk and went into Zane’s office.
She found him sitting behind his desk, at his computer. The moment she entered, he turned his chair in her direction.
“Hi.” His smile was warm and welcoming, as if he hadn’t ridden in with her less than half an hour ago.
“I just got an email labeled ‘For your eyes only.’ What’s that all about?” She wanted to know.
“It’s an invitation,” he told her simply. “To our wedding.”
“But we’re already married,” she pointed out. They were, weren’t they? He hadn’t, for some reason, gone through a sham ceremony, hiring people to play the parts of the minister and his wife, had he?
“Yes, we are,” Zane agreed, rising from behind his desk. He crossed to her. “But I thought maybe you might want to do it right, in front of your grandmother and your friends.”
“Wasn’t the other one legal?” she questioned.
“It was legal. It was also very small. Now that we’ve decided to stay married, I want to take vows with everyone watching so they can see for themselves that you’ve made me the happiest man on earth.”
Her eyes sparkled, but she did her best to contain her smile. “Only on earth?”
“In the universe,” he amended.
“In that case, okay,” she accepted with a barely suppressed laugh. “Will there be a wedding rehearsal and everything?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “I thought maybe we should rehearse the ending first.”
“The ending?” Mirabella asked quizzically.
“Yeah, this part.” Taking her into his arms, Zane offered, “Let me show you.”
And, as he brought his mouth down to hers, he most certainly did.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from BEAUTY AND THE BODYGUARD by Lisa Childs
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Beauty and the Bodyguard
by Lisa Childs
Prologue
How the hell had he survived? It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible...
But the proof was in the photo. Sure, he looked different. Then again, who wouldn’t, after what he’d been through? He’d been tortured to death. At least Derek had thought he’d killed the man...
Cockroaches were like that, though; they could survive the most extreme extermination attempts. The only thing they couldn’t survive was getting crushed.
The picture crumpled in a big fist. He better be enjoying his last moments of life—because he wasn’t going to stay alive. And this time when he died, he would damn well stay dead.
Derek Nielsen hurled the wadded-up photo against the bars of his cell. An alarm rang out. He hadn’t set it off—directly. But indirectly he had. The alarm was sounding because of him, according to his carefully orchestrated plan.
This was it—his escape.
With a buzz and a clank, the cell door slid open. He slipped through it like other prisoners stepped through theirs. They were confused, though, standing in the hall outside their cells. Derek hurried past them. He knew where he needed to be: the laundry room. He had only minutes to get to the vent leading out from one of the commercial dryers. After his efforts, it was big enough now for him to crawl through and escape.
Derek would be out soon to the vehicle that waited outside for him. The one that would slip through the gates and bring him to freedom.
Derek wouldn’t be returning to prison, although he fully intended to commit another crime. He was going to kill the man responsible for sending him to jail.
Chapter 1
Gage Huxton had survived six months in hell for this? Since becoming a bodyguard on his return from Afghanistan, his assignments had been a mixed bag. His first job with the Payne Protection Agency had been to protect an elderly lady with Alzheimer’s, who had only been in danger from her disease and not her imagined threats.
But then he had also been assigned to follow the man who was now his brother-in-law. That job had nearly gotten Gage killed. But he had survived being shot at and nearly run down.
He wasn’t sure he would survive this: wedding duty. He slid a finger between the bow tie and his skin, trying to loosen the stranglehold it had on him. An image flashed through his mind, of a noose tightening around his neck, squeezing off his oxygen until oblivion claimed him. But, unfortunately, oblivion had never lasted. He grimaced as he remembered other horrors.
“Are you okay?” a soft voice asked him.
He blinked away those horrific images and focused on Penny Payne. She sprang up from her chair and walked around her desk in the office in the basement of her white wedding chapel. It was in River City, Michigan—where his friend Nick had moved and where Gage now lived.
Not wanting to worry her, he jerked his chin up and down in a quick nod.
&nbs
p; Her brown eyes warm with affection and concern, she stared up at him. “You look very handsome in the tuxedo.”
He probably should have shaved the scruff from his jaw so he’d fit in more with the wedding guests when they arrived. But he hadn’t had the time or the inclination. “I must be crazy,” he said.
“Why’s that?” she asked, and now there was a twinkle of amusement in her eyes.
“To let you talk me into playing a bouncer for your wedding business.” Penny was his boss’s mother, so he probably hadn’t had much choice. But it hadn’t been any easier for him to tell her no than it probably would have been for her son.
She reached up, and he reacted as he did whenever someone moved to touch him. He flinched. Sympathy dimmed the usual brightness of her smile. “Gage...”
Instead of pulling back as so many other people did, she gently laid her palm against his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
He shook his head and dislodged her hand. “I don’t want pity,” he said. “I just want to do my job.”
“That’s not what—”
He forced a smile. “It’s okay.” Nobody had known how to react to him since he’d been back. So maybe it was good that not many people knew he’d survived.
“Where do you need me?” he asked. “Do I need to make sure the bride and groom’s mothers don’t get into a catfight?”
Penny’s smile dimmed more, and she replied, “The bride’s mother passed away years ago.”
“That’s too bad.” He didn’t see his mother often since she and his dad had moved to Alaska, but he could call her anytime. He rarely called, though; he didn’t want to worry her. “So no catfights between the mothers. What about the bridesmaids?”
Penny’s lips curved into a bigger smile. “Why do you sound almost hopeful?”
He chuckled. “Just looking for the upside in this assignment.”
“Cake,” she told him, and she patted his cheek again as if he was a little boy she was promising a treat if he behaved. Her kids were grown now, but she had raised three boys and a tomboy pretty much on her own. So she knew how to handle kids.
He wasn’t a kid, though. He hadn’t been one for a long time—not since he’d joined the Marines at eighteen a decade ago. Then there had been that stint with the FBI. But he didn’t like to think about those days, because then he inevitably thought about her.
The hell he’d endured the past six months was nothing compared to what she had put him through. No. He would rather think about the horrors of his six months in captivity than about Megan Lynch.
He exhaled a ragged breath and shook off all the memories. He had to leave the past in the past—all of it, but most of all Megan.
“So,” he said as he focused again on the present. “You want me to guard the cake?”
Dessert was probably all anyone considered him capable of protecting yet. Why else had he been assigned wedding chapel duty?
Penny shook her head. “Of course not. You have the most important job here.”
He narrowed his eyes and studied her, wondering if she was patronizing him. “And what’s that?”
“Guarding the bride, of course.”
“Guarding her?” He couldn’t imagine what danger she might be in, but then he had no idea who she was. “Or do you mean making sure she doesn’t run?”
He wouldn’t blame her if she did. He would never risk his heart on love again. But then he no longer had a heart to lose. Megan had destroyed it.
Penny sighed. “I almost wish she would...”
“The groom’s a tool?”
She shook her head. “He seems nice.”
So maybe the bride was a bridezilla. “Why does she need protecting?”
“Her father is a very important man,” Penny said, and as she said it, her face flushed.
“Who’s her father?” he asked. And more importantly, why had the fifty-something-year-old widow reacted with a blush at the very thought of him?
“He’s a man who’s made some enemies over the course of his career.”
Gage should have picked up one of the programs from the basket outside the chapel. He’d passed it on his way downstairs to Penny’s office. Then he would know the names of everyone in the wedding party. But he’d wanted to get his assignment before any of the guests arrived.
Now he had it: bridal protection.
“So he thinks some of these adversaries might go after his daughter during her wedding?” The guy had made some seriously ruthless enemies if that was the case.
Penny nodded. “He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t care what someone did to him.” Her face flushed a deeper shade of red.
Who was this guy to her? Apparently, someone she knew well. How well? Just how closely did Penny work with widowed fathers of the brides?
She continued, “But if someone hurt his daughter...”
Gage understood. His best friend, Nicholas Rus, had thought that someone was going after Gage’s sister for vengeance against him—because Nick loved Annalise and she had always loved him. But that hadn’t been about revenge, at least not against Nick or Annalise.
“If this guy has so many enemies,” Gage said, “why am I the only one from the Payne Protection Agency here?” Especially when he knew his boss didn’t trust that he was at a hundred percent yet. But Logan Payne wasn’t the only one who thought that; Gage didn’t entirely trust himself.
He was getting better, but it was still a struggle to sleep, to suppress the flashbacks, to forget the pain...
Penny tilted her head and stared up at him. “You’re the bodyguard the bride needs.”
Gage’s stomach lurched as realization suddenly dawned on him. And even without reading the program, he knew who the bride was. Penny had given him enough clues. He should have figured it out earlier. Hell, he should have figured it out when Penny asked him to help out at the chapel. He’d known she was planning a wedding for someone he’d known. Or at least, he’d thought he’d known her.
He guessed the wedding wasn’t all Penny Payne had been planning. Nick had warned him that she was a meddler. Her kids might not mind that she meddled in their lives, but he damn well minded.
He shook his head. “No...”
“Gage,” she beseeched him.
But he just shook his head again, refusing the assignment. He didn’t care if Mrs. Payne went to his boss and got him fired. He couldn’t protect this bride—not when he was the one against whom she most needed protecting.
* * *
“He’s gone,” Penny said.
Woodrow Lynch released a ragged breath and closed her office door behind him. “That’s probably for the best.”
“How can you say that?” Penny asked, her usually soft voice sharp with indignation. “She’s miserable.”
“She’s miserable because of him.” Anger coursed through him as he thought of the pain Gage Huxton had put his daughter through. Some of it had been inadvertent, like getting captured.
But the rest...
Quitting the Bureau.
Reenlisting.
Those had been Gage’s choices.
“Yes.” Penny stalked around her desk to stand in front of him. She was so petite despite the heels she wore with a silky bronze-colored dress. Her eyes were nearly that same color bronze. Her hair, chin length and curly, was a deeper shade of brown with red and bronze highlights. She was beautiful. She was also infuriating as hell. The woman always thought she was right.
And even more infuriating was the fact that she usually was.
“So, it’s for the best that she move on,” Woodrow said.
It had to be for the best, because the wedding was due to start in less than an hour. And he would rather walk his daughter down the aisle to a man who would not make her miserable.
Penny shook her head and tumbled several locks of hair into her eyes. The curls tangled in her long lashes. Instinctively, he reached out to extract them, but her hand collided with his. Her skin was as silky as her hair. Her fin
gers trembled beneath his, and she pulled away from his touch and stepped back until his hand fell away from her face.
He’d known her long enough—had attended enough weddings in her chapel—that he’d seen how warm and affectionate she was. With everyone else...
With him she was guarded and skittish. Usually. Right now she was also annoyed.
“Megan can’t move on,” Penny said, “unless she has closure.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question. It had just slipped out, probably because he’d wondered for a while why she had never remarried after her husband died sixteen years before.
Her big eyes narrowed. “We are not talking about me.”
She never did. He’d noticed that, too. She only talked about other people: her kids, his agents and now his daughter.
“Our concern should be only about Megan,” Penny continued. “I’ve never worked with a more miserable bride.”
Now he narrowed his eyes with indignation and pride. “Are you saying that she’s difficult?”
“Of course not,” Penny said. She reached out, almost as if she couldn’t help herself, and touched his arm. She probably only meant to reassure him about his daughter. But then she added, “She’s sad. So sad...”
He shouldn’t have been able to feel Penny’s touch, not through his tuxedo jacket and shirt, but his skin tingled as if he’d felt the heat and silkiness of her skin against his. What the hell was wrong with him?
Maybe he’d been single too long. Like her, he’d lost his spouse. She had died, more than twenty years ago, when their girls were little. But he didn’t need closure—or anything else—but his daughters’ happiness. Ellen was older and settled with a good husband and three beautiful little girls.
But Megan...
He’d always worried the most about Megan and never more than when she got involved with Gage Huxton. She’d fallen so hard for him that it was inevitable she would get hurt.
“She’s marrying a good man,” Woodrow insisted. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he’d used Bureau resources to check out the kid. He was a computer nerd—as introverted and shy as she was. “They’re perfect for each other.”
The Pregnant Colton Bride Page 22
