Rebecca York - Bridal Jeopardy

In that instant, the other people in the room seemed to vanish. Or maybe they had turned into shadows, because the man in the corner was the only distinct thing she could see. She fought for breath—fought for sanity, if she was honest about it.

She thought of crossing the room and … touching him. That idea leaped into her mind, and she wondered where it had come from. Touch a stranger? Why?

Yet the compulsion was so strong that she started toward him.

She knew that at any moment he would come striding toward her. He would reach out and put his hand on her arm, and then what?

Everything would change.

Bridal

Jeopardy

Rebecca York

(RUTH GLICK WRITING AS REBECCA YORK)

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as REBECCA YORK, is the author of more than one hundred books, including her popular 43 Light Street series for the Mills & Boon ®Intrigue line. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, she’s also an author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.

Norman, who’s always there for me

Contents

Prologue

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

Excerpt

Prologue

The horror of that day had replayed over and over in Craig Branson’s mind. What if he, Mom, Dad and Sam had gone to a different restaurant? What if they’d stayed home and ordered in? Life as he knew it would have continued on the same happy track.

But Dad had just brought in a big ad buy at the local TV station where he was promotions manager, and he’d been in the mood to celebrate his hard work.

“Where should we go to dinner?” he’d asked his twin sons, two dark-haired, dark-eyed boys only a few people could tell apart.

Craig and Sam were identical twins, born when a single egg had split in their mother’s womb. Twins were supposed to be close, but there was more between these two eight-year-olds than anyone else knew. There was a hidden bond and a fierce love born of the connection they could never explain to anyone else.

They’d looked at each other and begun a silent conversation about the merits of various choices.

Then Sam had spoken for the two of them. He’d asked to go to Venario’s, an Italian restaurant. If they ate at Venario’s, they could order an extra pizza and have it for breakfast the next morning.

Mom had protested that pizza was no kind of breakfast, but Dad let the boys have their way. If it made his twins happy to bring home pizza, he was all for it, as long as they had a nice portion of chicken or veal for dinner.

That evening they’d sat across from each other at the square table topped by a snowy cloth, silently debating the merits of ground beef or ham on their take-home pizza. Almost as soon as they’d come home from the hospital, they’d been able to read each other’s thoughts, a skill they instinctively kept hidden from the world. Mom suspected, but she had never asked them about it because the idea was too outlandish for her to wrap her brain around. She was a down-to-earth woman who wanted her sons to be strong and independent, even when their inclination was to present a united front.

At the next table, a group of men was talking loudly; their voices annoyed Mom and Dad, but they didn’t interfere with the Branson boys’ happy conversation.

That was another what-if that had tortured Craig for the twenty-two years since that night when his whole world had been shattered.

What if he and Sam hadn’t been so focused on each other? What if they’d been paying more attention to their surroundings?

Could Craig have saved Sam’s life?

He didn’t know because it all had happened so fast.

The door burst open, and two men had charged into the restaurant with guns drawn, already shooting as they ran. The guys at the next table hardly had time to react. One of them tried to stand and went down in a hail of bullets. Another one collapsed in his chair. And the third fell to the side, hitting Mom as she screamed in horror.

People all over the confined space were crying out and hitting the floor. But the chaos around Craig had hardly registered. His total attention was focused on Sam, who had been sitting closer to the scene of disaster.

He’d made a strangled sound and had fallen forward, his head hitting the table as blood spread across the crisp white cloth. His chest had been a mass of pain that Craig felt as though it were his own body on fire.

He’d leaped out of his seat, charging around the table to his brother’s side, slipping from his father’s grasp as he reached for Sam, struggling to maintain the fading connection between them. Panic rose inside him, and he’d clutched at his brother with his hand and with his mind.

Sam, don’t leave me.

Craig?

Sam. I can’t hear you, Sam.

I...can’t...

Those were his last memories of his brother. He had started screaming then, his cries drowning out the sound of a siren approaching.

His father’s arms had folded him close, protecting him from harm. But the harm was already done.

Sam was gone, vanished as though he had never been—leaving an aching gap in Craig’s soul.

Despair and anger raged inside the boy who lived. But even at the age of eight, Craig knew that he would find out who had killed his brother and avenge his death.

Chapter One

The light from the computer screen gave a harsh cast to Craig Branson’s angular features, yet he couldn’t conceal the feeling of elation surging inside himself.

He’d only been eight when his twin brother had been cruelly ripped away from him, but on that terrible day, he’d vowed that he would find the killers and bring them to justice. Now, finally, he had a lead on one of the shooters in a gangland assassination twenty-two years ago.

The restaurant where crime boss Jackie Montana and two of his men had been gunned down had been full of witnesses. Many of the patrons had identified the killers from their mug shots. They were two hired hit men named Joe Lipton and Arthur Polaski who had taken jobs all over the U.S.

Although the cops knew the assassins’ names, the men fled the scene and disappeared from the face of the earth. Now Craig knew why.

Unable to sit still, he stood and strode out of his office, then paced into the hall of the brick ranch house where he’d lived in Bethesda, Maryland, for the past few years.

It was in an upscale neighborhood just outside the nation’s capital, the perfect place for the career he’d started planning even before Sam’s funeral. He would make sure he was tough enough, smart enough and well trained enough to find his brother’s killers. To that end he’d graduated from college at George Washington University, then enlisted in the army and gone to officer-candidate school right after basic training. From there he got his first choice of assignments, the military intelligence service. After learning everything he could about investigative techniques, he returned to civilian life and started his own detective agency.

When his dad died nine months after Mom, he inherited all the money he’d ever need—if you considered his unassuming lifestyle. He had no family. No wife and children, because he knew he was lacking something that most people took for granted—the ability to connect with others on a deep, personal level. He craved those things with a fierce sense of loss because he’d had them with Sam. When his brother had been ripped from him, his anchor to the human race had been severed.