Lisa Childs: Groom Under Fire

Her breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. She must have been holding it, and she murmured, “I think so …”

But he heard the doubt in her voice and eased up so she could roll over and face him. “Were you hit?” he asked. He ran his hands down her sides, checking for wounds. Just for wounds …

But he found soft curves and lean muscles instead. Heat tingled in his hands and in other parts of his body. A few minutes ago he’d thought she was going to kiss him. Their mouths had been only a breath apart, but maybe that was because he’d leaned down—because he’d wanted to kiss her so badly his gut had twisted.

The woman got to him as no one else ever had. And that made her dangerous—almost as dangerous as the shooter.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDSwrites paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

To my wonderful groom—Philip Tyson—thanks for an amazing first year of marriage. And to the woman who raised him to be the wonderful man he is, Shirley Tyson—thank you for being such a loving and supportive mother. You are a phenomenal woman, and I am so lucky to have you as a mother-in-law.

Contents

Prologue Prologue Their petals dried and brittle and as black as tar, the roses arrived the day after the announcement was printed in the paper. There were a dozen of them in the box, the thorny stems twisted around each other like barbed wire. Tanya Chesterfield’s finger bled from the one she had been foolish enough to touch. Crimson droplets fell onto the white envelope of the card that had come with the gift. Her hand trembled as she fumbled to open the envelope. Maybe she should have just tossed it and the flowers into the trash. But she had to see if it was as threatening as the other notes she’d received anytime she had seriously dated anyone the past ten years. She wasn’t just dating now, though. She was engaged. And it was that engagement announcement that she pulled from the envelope. The picture of her and her intended groom had been desecrated with a big black X. But that wasn’t all the marker had scratched out on the announcement. The date of the wedding had been changed to date of: DEATH.

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

Extract

Prologue

Their petals dried and brittle and as black as tar, the roses arrived the day after the announcement was printed in the paper. There were a dozen of them in the box, the thorny stems twisted around each other like barbed wire.

Tanya Chesterfield’s finger bled from the one she had been foolish enough to touch. Crimson droplets fell onto the white envelope of the card that had come with the gift.

Her hand trembled as she fumbled to open the envelope. Maybe she should have just tossed it and the flowers into the trash. But she had to see if it was as threatening as the other notes she’d received anytime she had seriously dated anyone the past ten years.

She wasn’t just dating now, though. She was engaged. And it was that engagement announcement that she pulled from the envelope.

The picture of her and her intended groom had been desecrated with a big black X. But that wasn’t all the marker had scratched out on the announcement. The date of the wedding had been changed to date of: DEATH.

Chapter One

“You’re messing with me,” Cooper Payne accused his older brother. He hadn’t been gone so long that he’d forgotten how they all handled any emotional and uncomfortable situation—with humor and teasing.

“I’m giving you an assignment,” Logan said, but he was focused on the papers on his desk as if unwilling to meet Cooper’s stare. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

After his honorable discharge from the Marines, he had come home to River City, Michigan, in order to join the family business. The business his brother had started: private security protection. Not his mother’s business: weddings.

“I want a real assignment,” Cooper clarified as he paced the small confines of Logan’s dark-paneled office. “Not some trick our mother put you up to.”

“Trick?” Logan asked, his usually deep voice rising with fake innocence. “Why would you think it’s a trick?”

Frustration clutched at his stomach, knotting his guts. “Because Mom’s been trying to get me to go to this damn wedding before I even got on a plane to head back...”

“Home,” Logan finished for him. “You’re home. And Tanya Chesterfield and Stephen Wochholz are your friends. Why wouldn’t you want to attend their wedding?”

Because the thought of Tanya marrying any man—let alone Stephen—made him physically sick. He shook his head. “We were friends in high school,” Cooper reminded his brother and himself. “That was a dozen years ago.”

And as beautiful as Tanya was, it was a miracle that she wasn’t already married with a couple of kids. It wasn’t as if she would have been pining over him. They hadn’t shared more than a couple of kisses in high school before agreeing that they were better as friends just as she and Stephen were. But now she was marrying Stephen...

They made sense, though. More sense than he and Tanya ever would have. She was a damned heiress to billions and he was an ex-marine working for his big brother.

Maybe...

Logan was focused on him now, studying him through narrowed blue eyes. Cooper looked so much like Logan and his twin, with the same blue eyes and black hair, that people had often questioned if they were actually triplets. But Cooper was eighteen months younger than Parker and Logan. And they never let him forget it.

Finally Logan spoke, “Stephen still considers you a friend. He requested you be his best man.”

“How do you know that?” he asked. Before his brother could reply, he answered his own question, “Mom...” As much as he loved her, the woman was infuriating. “She’s obsessed with this damn wedding!”

“Weddings are her business,” Logan replied with pride.

For years their mother had put all her energy and love into her family—taking on the roles of both mother and father after her police-officer husband had been killed in the line of duty fifteen years ago. But when her youngest—and only girl—had gone off to college, she had found a new vocation—saving the church where she and Cooper’s father had been married from demolition and turning it into a wedding venue with her as planner.

“And security is our business,” Cooper said. His brother had promised him a job with Payne Protection the minute his enlistment ended. He had even brought him directly to the office from the airport, but that had been a couple of days ago and he had yet to give him a job. Until tonight...

“That’s why you need to get over to the church,” Logan told him.

“For security? At a wedding?” He snorted his derision.

“Tanya is the granddaughter of a billionaire,” Logan needlessly reminded him.

As if Cooper hadn’t been brutally aware of the differences between her lifestyle and his, her grandfather had pointed out that a fatherless kid like him with no prospects for the future had nothing to offer an heiress like Tanya. Benedict Bradford had wanted a doctor or lawyer for his eldest granddaughter—a man worthy of her. He hadn’t considered a soldier who might not make it through his deployments worthy of Tanya. Neither had Cooper. The old man had been dead for years now, but Benedict Bradford would have approved of Stephen, who had become a corporate attorney.