Explosive Engagement

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“Are you all right?” Garek asked as he dragged her into his arms.

She clung to him, trembling. “Yes. Yes.”

“This is your fault!” Milek told Logan. “This is your danger you’ve dragged her into with you!”

Logan shook his head, but before he could defend himself, Stacy pulled free of Garek and whirled toward Milek, who must have sobered up, because his eyes were clear now and his face pale. She poked his chest with a finger.

“You should be thanking him for saving my life again!” she shouted at her brother. “If Logan hadn’t stopped that bomb from going off, it would have killed us!”

“Stopped the bomb?” Garek scoffed. “Your damn stairwell has been blown off the building! You could have been killed.”

“The ATF agents set it off when they were moving it,” Logan explained.

“My stairwell is gone?” Stacy glanced back at the building and shuddered. “That could have been us...”

“It was supposed to be you,” Logan said. “The bomb was set inside your apartment.” And it was impossible that the bomb was intended to harm Logan because no one—not even her brothers—could have guessed that he would have driven her home. Stacy hadn’t announced their fake engagement until that afternoon. And even if they’d known he might step foot inside her apartment, he doubted that they would have risked her life even to take his.

So he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill. Apparently, someone wanted Stacy Kozminski dead, as well.

* * *

STACY SHIVERED. SHE wasn’t cold even though goose bumps lifted on her arms and the back of her neck beneath the heavy fall of her hair. Her skin was tingling because of Logan Payne’s stare. He stood several feet away, deep in conversation with the ATF agents, but his gaze was on her, as if he was reluctant to let her out of his sight.

She had already spoken with them, answering all their questions the best that she could. Given that she hadn’t been home since her dad died at the prison, she’d had no idea when or how someone had broken into her apartment to set the bomb. And she had absolutely no idea why.

Logan conversed with the agents now. He was probably the one asking the questions instead of answering them. But as he talked, he watched her. While his stare unsettled her, it also—oddly enough—reassured her. He had already saved her life once. Maybe twice if those shots at the cemetery had actually been intended for her.

But why would someone try to shoot at her? Or worse yet, blow her up? Unable to comprehend why anyone would want her dead, she murmured, “Why?”

“That’s a damn good question,” Garek replied as if she’d asked it of him.

Maybe still in shock over nearly being killed, she just shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Then why would you agree to it?” Garek asked.

Even further confused, she turned toward her brother and asked, “Agree to what?”

“You and Logan Payne,” he said. “Why are you claiming you’re engaged to the guy?”

She glanced to Logan again. At least he was too far away to hear her lie again and contradict it. Yet. He would eventually deny their engagement, but until then she intended to perpetuate the lie. “It’s the truth.”

Garek shook his head. “You hate the guy’s guts.”

“That was once true,” she admitted. Even that morning it had been true. But she didn’t hate Logan anymore—not after he’d saved her. That would have been ungrateful or, at the very least, stupid. She owed him her life. And maybe she could repay him with his. “But my feelings for him have changed.”

Milek snorted. “Yeah, right...”

“Even if your feelings for him have changed,” Garek allowed, “his feelings for you couldn’t have. He’s hated all of us for years because of what our father did to his.”

“Our father didn’t do anything to his,” she insisted. Why was she the only one who believed in his innocence? How could his own sons doubt him?

Garek nodded sharply as if he was only humoring her. “Yeah, right, but Payne doesn’t believe that.”

That was definitely true. “But he doesn’t hold us responsible,” she insisted. Weakly. She really was a lousy liar.

“He always thinks the worst of us,” Milek said. “He actually believes we’ve been shooting at him.”

Despite Mrs. Payne’s warning about hurting their feelings, Stacy had already accused them of shooting. But then they’d been drunk and she’d been angry. So now she kept her voice low and her gaze steady as she asked, “Have you?”

Garek sucked in a breath. “I guess your feelings for him really have changed,” he said, “because you never would have listened to his suspicions before.”

She might have listened, but she would have ignored them—even though she had never been able to ignore him. Even when she’d hated him...

Fully aware that her brother hadn’t actually answered her question, she persisted, “Are they only suspicions?”

“Of course,” Garek replied—as offended as she had been afraid he would be. His mouth pulled into a tight grimace of disgust, and he swallowed hard. “I can’t believe you’d fall for Logan Payne...”

If she had, she would have been as disgusted with herself as her oldest brother was with her. But she couldn’t let him see her true feelings, so she buried them deep and plastered on a dreamy smile.

“Why not?” she asked. “He’s an amazing man.”

“Amazing that he’s still alive...” Milek murmured.

She shivered at her brother’s ominous tone. Maybe he was just still drunk. He couldn’t mean that he actually wanted Logan dead. But then maybe he did...

“Milek!” she admonished him. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

He shrugged. “All I meant was that if someone has tried to kill him as many times as he claims, then it’s amazing that they haven’t succeeded.”

Garek nodded. “It is amazing. But then we actually only have his word that these attempts were made on his life.”

“I was there when he was shot at in the cemetery,” she reminded them. And she had been so furious over it that she’d already accused them of being involved. They’d been drinking then and confused, so they probably hadn’t realized that she’d already had her own suspicions.

“But was it really him they were shooting at?” Garek voiced her earlier fear. “Or was it you?”

She shrugged now. “I don’t know about that, but I do know that Logan wasn’t the one shooting at me. He saved me at the cemetery like he saved me just now when we discovered the bomb in my apartment.”

Her legs began to shake as she remembered that mess of wires and pipes sitting in the middle of her kitchen table where usually she displayed a crystal bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers.

“Has it occurred to you that he was able to stop it from going off so easily because he’d concocted the damn thing?” Garek voiced his own suspicions.

“He was able to dismantle it because his brother—the former marine—had shown him how to disarm improvised explosive devices.”

“If his brother Cooper knows how to take the bombs apart, he must know how to put them together,” Garek said.

“And Parker could have been the one shooting at the cemetery,” Milek added.

Maybe her brothers hadn’t sobered up yet. “Why?” she asked. “Why would they try to kill their own brother and risking hurting their mother, too?” The Payne family had already suffered too much loss, and that loss had brought them closer together, had made them more protective of each other. Not murderous.

“I can think of quite a few reasons,” Milek murmured with a resentful glare in Logan’s direction.

“They weren’t trying to kill him,” Garek explained to her. “They were trying to kill you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Maybe they actually think your crazy engagement story is the truth and they’re trying to stop the wedding,” Garek said.

Even though it had been Mrs. Payne’s idea, nobody in Logan’s family knew about their fake engagement. And given Logan’s opposition to it, they probably never would.

Garek continued, “But seriously, the Payne family would only act on the boss’s orders.”

“And Logan Payne is the boss,” Milek added.

Maybe he was boss of Payne Protection, but Penny Payne was the boss of her family. And she would never allow any of her kids to hurt her. She knew how much Stacy had already been hurt. And so did her brothers.

They were only trying to protect her. And maybe they had reason to.

She really only had Logan’s word that there had been other attempts on his life—attempts that hadn’t involved her nearly getting shot or blown up, as well. She turned toward where he’d been standing with the ATF agents, but he was no longer there.

Then a strong arm curled around her shoulders and pulled her tight to his side. She didn’t mistake him for one of her brothers this time. She recognized his touch now. Her body recognized it as her pulse quickened. But that might not have been with attraction; that might have only been with fear. She couldn’t, and shouldn’t, trust him. Because, as her brothers had pointed out, his feelings for her couldn’t have changed. He still hated her.

But then why did he hold her so closely, nearly molding her body against his? Just to mess with her? Did he realize how much his nearness affected her?

“Payne, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Garek asked as he glared at Logan with hatred darkening his gray eyes.

She couldn’t trust her brothers, either—because Logan might be telling the truth about the attempts on his life and he might be right about who was behind them.

Instead of ignoring Garek’s impudent question, Logan—equally as impudent—replied, “I’m taking my fiancée home.”

She barely managed to contain her shock. He’d been adamant that his mother’s plan would never work, so why was he playing along now? Or was he only playing—just amusing himself by aggravating her brothers?

Garek tensed and bristled like Cujo when he saw a cat or a small dog or a squirrel. His upper lip curled, he barked back, “She is home.”

With the stairwell blown off the side of the building, it didn’t look much like home. But she could still access her second-story apartment through the inside stairwell.

“The ATF agents haven’t cleared the building yet,” Logan said. “Nobody’s going to be allowed inside until they make sure it’s safe.”

“I—I should stay,” she said, hoping to defuse the tense situation between Logan and her brothers, “while they do that.”

“But even if the ATF agents declare your place safe,” Logan said, “you’re not.”

She shivered.

“You would know,” Milek bitterly muttered.

Logan nodded as if in agreement with her brother. Apparently, he hadn’t picked up on the deeper meaning. “Neither of us is safe until we catch the person trying to kill us.”

Was that why he was acting like her fiancé? Had he decided to use their fake engagement to try to find their would-be killers?

“Us?” Garek snarled the word. “You and Stacy are not an ‘us.’” And her brother reached for her, clasping her arm to pull her from Logan’s grasp.

Cujo growled in protest, echoing the sound Logan had made low in his throat. His arm tightened around her shoulders, holding her against his side. And the dog stepped in front of him to protect them both from men he had never accepted as alpha males or friends.

“That damn dog likes you?” Milek asked, amused. “That dog doesn’t like anybody but Stacy.”

“That’s not true...” But it absolutely was or at least had been.

Logan reached his free hand down and patted the dog’s head. “It’s obviously not true,” he said. “But then not much of what you guys say is true.”

“You self-righteous hypocrite!” Garek stepped closer, but the dog growled louder and bared his teeth completely. So the man stepped back.

“He’s not,” Stacy defended Logan. She believed that Logan thought he’d been doing the right thing, that he’d been getting justice for his father.

“This is ridiculous,” Garek said. “I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you but it sure isn’t love.”

Milek studied them through narrowed eyes as if he was beginning to have some doubts that their engagement was fake. Maybe he’d remembered accusing her of having a crush on Logan during their father’s trial. “Garek, you’re not exactly an expert on love since you’ve never been in it.”