Licensed to Marry

by Charlotte Douglas

Laura chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “You don’t dare tell her that you’ll only be at the Institute temporarily.”

  “Right. Molly’s very open and talkative. Unless she believes we’re truly married—and for the long haul, she might give our secret away.”

  The last thing Laura wanted was to upset the adorable Molly. “When the time comes, we can ease the transition. I can spend time with her at the ranch, so she doesn’t feel abandoned.”

  The approval on his face warmed her as much as the champagne she’d consumed. “You’d do that?”

  “Absolutely. In the past few weeks, I’ve learned what it’s like to lose a parent. I wouldn’t want Molly to suffer like I have.”

  “If you spend time with her later, when all this is over, I think she’ll be okay. She’s a pretty resilient kid. Took the move to Montana in stride.”

  Laura flashed him a smile. “With the help of a pony.”

  Kyle nodded. “Returning to Ribbons will be a consolation, too.”

  And how will I feel, Laura wondered, when both Kyle and Molly walk out of my life for good? Will I be able to endure the loneliness again?

  “Hungry?” Kyle asked.

  Shaken from her thoughts, Laura knew he was talking about ordering dinner, but her deepest hunger wasn’t for food. Even though she was reluctant ever to marry again, to risk anew the hurt that Curt had inflicted on her, she longed for a family of her own. Josiah had been her only family for so long, and with him gone, she had never felt so alone.

  Until she met Kyle Foster.

  But her association with Kyle, no matter how intimate it appeared on the surface, was strictly temporary, and if she let herself feel otherwise, her former loneliness and isolation would only boomerang more intensely when he and Molly returned to their cabin at the ranch. Kyle was worried about breaking Molly’s heart. For the sake of her own heart, Laura would have to keep her emotional distance from both Kyle and Molly.

  She steeled herself against his charm. “Hungry? You’re talking about our wedding supper?”

  “If you don’t mind room service.”

  “You order,” she suggested. “Surprise me.”

  LATER, over coffee, however, she couldn’t help delving deeper into what made her new husband tick. “Your degrees are in biology and chemistry. How did you end up in law enforcement?”

  “Looking back, I was destined to end up in law enforcement, but it took a while for me to realize it.”

  “Something from your childhood?”

  “Partly. When I was in elementary school, there was a boy in my class, a big kid with a low IQ who’d been held back a couple grades. He wasn’t happy, and he did his best to make every other kid in school miserable, too. He extorted their lunch money by threatening to beat them up. And he could have, he was that huge.”

  She tried to imagine Kyle as a youngster, with baby fat like Molly, and chubby arms and legs, but she couldn’t get past the rugged, muscular now of him.

  “He took my money one day,” Kyle said, “and I went home and told my father, hoping Dad would take care of him. But Dad insisted stopping him was up to me, that I should always stand up to bullies, who were basically cowards at heart.”

  “So you fought him?”

  Kyle laughed. “No, thank God. That big gorilla would have mopped up the floor with me. I was just a skinny little kid. No, I did what Dad said and refused to hand over my lunch money the next time. And Dad was right. The bully was afraid to fight. The other kids witnessed my success, and from then on, the bully was out of business.”

  “That’s why you became a cop?”

  “In a way, yes. I’d always loved science, and I was enjoying my work as a researcher after I graduated, but I missed working with people. Alone all day in the lab, I didn’t have a chance to make many friends. My best friend was Ted, this old fellow who lived in the apartment next door to me. He’d hit the beach at Normandy on D day, survived the war in Europe, came home, raised a family and outlived them all. He was barely scratching by on his social security, but he was generous with me to a fault. He’d have me over for dinner often, and afterward he’d tell stories of World War II. He never bragged, but I could read through the lines. What his generation did for this country was extraordinary. It was a shame after giving so much, the old guy was living out his last days in near poverty.”

  Caught up in the story, mesmerized by the passion shining in his green eyes, Laura shifted closer to Kyle.

  “One evening after working late,” he said, “I was walking home from the lab and spotted a crowd and several police cars and an ambulance near my building. When I approached, paramedics were lifting a shrouded body into the ambulance. Someone beside me muttered that an old man had been beaten to death.”

  Tears glistened in Kyle’s eyes, and with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Laura guessed where his story was heading.

  “I found out the next morning that Ted was the man who died. Some punk had jumped him for the money from the social security check he’d just cashed. I remembered the tough kid from my school days, and my father’s insistence that I had to stand up against bullies. After Ted died, I couldn’t return to the safety and isolation of the laboratory, not while scum roamed the streets preying on innocent people like that sweet old man. I quit my job and enrolled in the next session at the police academy.”

  “Any regrets?”

  His eyes clouded with an even deeper pain. “Oh, yeah.”

  For several long minutes, he was quiet. She’d treaded on dangerous ground with her question, from the look of him, and she didn’t know if she wanted him to explain or move on.

  He lifted his head with a shake, as if waking from a bad dream. “I wish I’d never joined the bomb squad.”

  “What?” She hadn’t known.

  “For the first few years, I was a street cop, working to keep the Teds of the world safe. Then my chief discovered my chemistry background and persuaded me to join the bomb squad.”

  “Working on bombs—wasn’t it terrifying?”

  “God, yes. Everyone in the demolition unit was scared sh…senseless. It went with the territory. But that’s not the cause of my regrets.”

  She sat still, waiting, watching the pain flit across his face. If he wanted to tell her, she’d listen. If not, she wouldn’t push him.

  “If I hadn’t joined the squad,” he said, “maybe Buzz Williams, my former partner, would still be alive.”

  As if exorcising a horrible ghost, he told her the entire story of the bomb at the Hollywood Bowl, Buzz’s insistence on defusing it, and the subsequent explosion. She understood now where the scar across his eyebrow originated.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself,” she insisted. “Buzz was doing what he wanted to do. He knew the risks, just as you did.”

  “Have you been talking to the LAPD shrink?” he asked with a twisted grin. “You’re singing the same tune.”

  She moved away from the painful subject. “You said you quit after Buzz died. Why did you join Montana Confidential?”

  “Because Daniel persuaded me.”

  “How?”

  Anger and determination turned his eyes to green fire. “He told me we’d be going after terrorists. And terrorists, especially ones with bombs and biological weapons, are the biggest bullies of all.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kyle stifled a yawn, leaned back against the jet’s cushioned seat and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept much the night before, but not for the usual honeymoon reasons. He and Laura had talked until almost 2:00 a.m., getting the story of their fake courtship, engagement and marriage straight for the staff at the Quinlan Research Institute.

  She had given him detailed descriptions of the members of the staff, starting with Dr. Lawrence Tyson, the head researcher, all the way down to Wayne Pritchard, a research assistant. Any one of them could be the Institute’s inside connection to the Black Order, but from the background Laura gave him, Kyle had no idea where to cast suspicion. He’d have
to keep his eyes and ears open and hope the traitor would make a mistake that pointed to his or her identity.

  In the intimate luxury of the honeymoon suite, he and Laura had shared every fact about each other that might present a stumbling block in their deception; every fact, that is, except the details of their divorces. Laura’s emotions were still obviously raw from the loss of her father, and Kyle hadn’t wanted to cause more pain with questions about a subject she clearly intended to avoid. As for himself, his feelings for Alicia had withered and died long before she left him, so talking about her wasn’t that painful. It just didn’t seem relevant. He’d told Laura only that his ex-wife had remarried, then changed the subject, not wanting her to feel the obligation of an informational quid pro quo.

  He lay wide-eyed for hours fixing the names and information about the Institute staff in his mind, but even if he hadn’t had that mental exercise to keep him awake, he doubted he’d have slept much. The daring and risk of their deception weighed on him. He’d have to remain alert, both mentally and physically, at the Institute. Otherwise, he’d be putting not only himself but Laura and Molly in danger if he made a slip.

  Despite his fatigue, once Kyle had cleared his mind of the upcoming mission, he’d still found sleep elusive. Laura had left the door to the bedroom open, in case he needed to use the bathroom during the night. From the sofa where he slept in the suite’s sitting room, he could hear the slight rustle of the sheets as she turned in her sleep and the faint whisper of her regular breathing.

  Kyle had expected their marriage-in-name-only ploy to be a tricky situation, strewn with as much potential for disaster as a Bosnian minefield. What he hadn’t expected was his inability to tame his rebellious emotions. When the fusty little judge who stank of cigar smoke had declared them husband and wife and directed Kyle to kiss his bride, he’d been overcome with the desire to sweep her into his arms and kiss her senseless. The intensity of his desire had shaken him, and he’d needed every shred of discipline and self-control he could muster to keep his kiss impersonal. In the few hours that had remained until dawn, he’d tossed and turned on the sofa, wondering how he’d manage to keep his emotional distance while providing a display of affection convincing enough for the Institute staff to believe he and Laura were true newlyweds.

  The soft touch of her hand on his arm pulled him from his thoughts. “We’re almost there.”

  He opened his eyes to the sweet smile lighting her periwinkle blue eyes and turning up the corners of her delectable mouth and groaned inwardly.

  What had he gotten himself into?

  Her smile vanished, and he realized his expression must have reflected his thoughts.

  “You okay?” Her soft voice was filled with concern.

  He didn’t have to force a smile in return. Just being close to her made him want to grin like an idiot. “Fine,” he answered. “Or at least, nothing wrong that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure.”

  C.J. giggled in the seat ahead of him, leaned into the aisle, and glanced back at them with a smug look on her pretty face. “That’s the way I like to hear honeymooners talk.”

  Before Kyle could issue an appropriate comeback, the jet touched down on the tarmac at the Bozeman airport, and they were unbuckling seatbelts, gathering overnight bags and disembarking the plane.

  Frank, his arm around C.J., stopped on the runway and turned to Kyle. “C.J. and I will take care of the paperwork in the airport office, then I’ll drive her back to the Institute.”

  Kyle nodded. “We have the Quinlan SUV. Laura and I will stop by the ranch first to see Molly, then head for—”

  “Home,” Laura said. “I want Kyle to see the layout of the Institute before dark.”

  Kyle shook Frank’s hand and thanked him for his help, while C.J. hugged Laura and whispered a long time in her ear. Laura answered her too softly for Kyle to hear, and C.J. turned away laughing. Then the newlyweds headed for the parking lot.

  “What was that all about?” Kyle asked.

  “What?”

  “C.J.’s whispers.”

  Her eyes glinted with mischief. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I have to know,” he insisted. “We can’t have secrets if our masquerade is going to work.”

  Laura sighed. “Well, if you must know, she said you’re a stunningly attractive man, and it’s too damn bad we didn’t have a real wedding night.”

  Kyle felt his face redden in spite of his efforts to remain unperturbed. “What did you tell her?”

  Laura’s demeanor was stern. “That if she made a move on my new husband, I’d scratch her eyes out.” A muscle tugged at the side of her mouth as she apparently struggled to keep a serious face.

  Surprised by her feisty retort, Kyle burst out laughing, and Laura joined in. The tension he’d felt earlier dissolved. “As long as we can keep our sense of humor, Mrs. Foster, this fake marriage of ours will be a piece of cake.”

  Their levity, however, was short-lived. On the drive back to Lonesome Pony, Kyle had Laura grill him on the information she’d given him about the Institute and the staff. In spite of their joking at the airport, they both were well aware of the gravity of their situation.

  Daniel came out to greet them when they arrived at the ranch.

  “I’ve contacted the security company in Billings,” he said quietly, after a round of boisterous congratulations that rang across the yard, loud enough for any ranch hand within shouting distance to hear. “Monty Slater, the owner, will pay you a visit at the Institute tomorrow. He’s a good man, retired FBI. You can trust him with your life.”

  A high-pitched squeal sounded from near the barn, and Kyle glanced up to see Molly barreling down the driveway as fast as her chubby legs would carry her.

  “Daddy! Daddy! You’re back!”

  He swept his daughter into his arms and hugged her tight. She lifted her head and glanced shyly at Laura. “Hello, Miss Laura.”

  Laura reached over and tousled Molly’s curls. “Hi, sweetheart.”

  The warmth of Molly’s reciprocating smile left little doubt how fond Molly was of Laura.

  “I’m back, doodlebug,” Kyle said, “but only for a little while. I have to leave again in a few minutes. I just came by to say hello to my favorite girl.”

  “Mrs. McMurty?” Devilment shone in Molly’s eyes.

  “Why, yes,” Kyle answered, pretending surprise. “How did you guess?”

  “Oh, Daddy!” She smacked him on the shoulder with her tiny fist. “You know I’m you’re favorite girl.”

  “You sure are.” His heart ached with love for the child. He hated being away from her and was sorry to have to leave again so quickly. “I have to go away for a couple days, but I’ll be back soon, and I’ll call you every night.”

  “You going with Frank and Court and Daniel?”

  “Not this time. I’m going with Miss Laura.”

  “I like Miss Laura. Can I go, too?”

  Laura caressed the little girl’s cheek. “Not this time, but the next time. I promise.”

  “Molly!” Jewel’s impatient shout emanated above them from the corral. “You gonna ride this pony or not?”

  Molly wriggled in his arms, and Kyle set her on her feet. “Gotta go, Daddy. Jewel’s waiting.”

  He bent and kissed her again before she rocketed toward the barn.

  Daniel grinned. “No need to worry about her. She’s happy as a pig in mud, and Dale and Jewel keep a close eye on her.”

  “I’m glad it’ll only be a few more days.” Kyle’s impatience bubbled to a boiling point. “This whole process is taking too long. The Black Order could be back in Agar now, for all we know.”

  Daniel’s brown eyes glowed with understanding. “We’re all in a hurry to catch those bastards, but taking the time to establish your cover is crucial. If you’re not believable as Laura’s husband and the new administrator of the Institute, we could lose you and let the terrorists slip away and take the D-5 with them. Slow and steady. That�
�s the only way to pull this off.”

  Kyle jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket and flashed his boss a rueful grin. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Dale packed your things this morning. You can load them while Jewel keeps Molly busy.”

  Laura glanced anxiously toward the little girl, treading toward the barn. “Won’t Molly worry when she sees Kyle’s clothes missing?”

  Daniel shook his head. “She’s staying in the main house in Jewel’s room, so she won’t notice. Dale will have Molly’s things packed up, too, by the time you come back for her. Sure you don’t want to tell Molly about the move now?”

  Kyle shook his head. “She might fret about it without me here to reassure her.”

  He kept to himself the fact that he wasn’t moving Molly to the Institute until he’d checked it out himself and was convinced his daughter would be safe there.

  LAURA WAITED in the vehicle while Patrick McMurty helped Kyle shift his suitcases from the cabin into the SUV. She’d seen the pain that clouded Kyle’s eyes when he’d said goodbye to Molly. The man was a paradox. Tough as nails on the outside, with the iron nerves to face down fanatical terrorists or disarm destructive devices, but held inside all a father’s love and tenderness toward his daughter that were a joy to behold.

  With Kyle’s clothes stowed aboard, he slammed the gate of the SUV with a solid thunk, thanked Patrick with a handshake and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the car and headed down the driveway. From the corral, Molly, atop Ribbons, waved happily. Kyle blew her a kiss and continued past the main house toward the highway. From the look on his face, Laura could tell he was missing Molly already.

  For the next half hour, they traveled in companionable silence, as if both were all talked out from their overnight information marathon, but as they neared the turnoff to the Institute, Kyle glanced across at her.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ll be on home turf. You’re the one who has to deal with unknown territory and strangers.”

  “You’ve prepared me well.”

  His praise pleased her. “You think so?”