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But he would just have to be very, very careful he didn’t wind up like Lars, the blond giant of a man who was sitting beside him in a Payne Protection Agency vehicle, holding a ring over the console. Dane was behind the wheel of the black SUV.
“So tell me—what do you think?” the guy eagerly asked him, his pale blue eyes bright with something almost like giddiness.
Dane sighed. “You know I love you, man, but only as a friend. I gotta turn you down.”
Lars swung his free hand into Dane’s shoulder. The tap probably would have knocked a smaller man through the driver’s door, but Dane was nearly as big as his friend. “I’m damn well not proposing to you.”
“Phewww,” Dane said. “You made me nervous. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”
Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve given that speech a few times.”
“So have you,” Dane reminded him.
Lars hadn’t been any more eager for romance or love than Dane was. In fact, with his sister missing, falling in love had been the last thing on Lars’s mind.
Until he started at Payne Protection.
The security agency might guard people’s lives but they were hell on hearts.
Lars glanced down at the ring he held out, and for a second the brightness of his eyes dimmed. “Do you think she’ll give me that speech?”
Dane’s stomach tightened into knots. He hated this stuff, hated seeing his friend so anxious. Lars had already suffered enough when his sister had gone missing and been presumed dead. It would be so much worse for him if he were to be turned down now by the woman he loved. “Maybe you should wait. You two haven’t been together very long. And Nikki has made it clear she wants nothing to do with marriage.”
“With weddings,” Lars corrected him. “She doesn’t want a wedding.”
“What the hell’s the difference?” he asked as he fumbled with the bow tie at his neck. That damn thing was cutting off his circulation.
Lars snapped the case closed on the ring and reached across to adjust Dane’s tie. “This. The monkey suits, the dresses, the pomp and ceremony—this is the wedding. It’s one day. The marriage is the life.”
“So you think she’s fine with the life and just wants to skip the day?” Dane hadn’t always been the greatest at math but one day seemed a hell of a lot easier to get through than a lifetime.
Lars sighed wistfully. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
Dane couldn’t blow smoke and offer his friend false assurances. He always had to tell the truth—unless he’d been sworn to keep someone else’s secret. “That’s a hell of a risk you’re taking.”
“Proposing?” Lars asked. “What’s the worst that can happen? She can say no.”
Dane figured it was a bigger risk if she said yes. But he just shrugged.
“And if I’m late to her mother’s wedding, she’s sure to say no,” Lars said as he shoved open the passenger’s door. “We better get inside the chapel.”
Dane stepped out of the driver’s side and walked around the truck, but he hesitated before heading up the steep steps to the double doors of the little white chapel. His heart pounded slowly and heavily with dread in a chest that felt constricted in that damn tuxedo.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. “I get why you are. You’re dating the bride’s daughter. But why was I told I needed to attend?”
It hadn’t been an invitation. It had been a command.
Lars stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back toward him. “You haven’t heard about what happened the last time the bride and groom were in this chapel together?”
Dane shook his head. Unlike Lars, he was trying to keep his distance from the Paynes. He didn’t want to be sucked into their little family cult. He wouldn’t have even been here if Cooper hadn’t made it an assignment.
“The whole wedding party was taken hostage and the groom was shot and nearly died.”
Dane shuddered. “Talk about bad luck. Shouldn’t they have taken that as an omen and forgotten about trying to get married again?”
“Woodrow Lynch wasn’t the groom that day. He was the father of the bride,” Lars explained. “He’s also a former FBI chief who’s made a lot of enemies over the course of his career.”
Dane glanced at the other people, all dressed up, heading into the church. Could one of them be a threat? “So he thinks there might be another attempt to kill him?” He studied the people more carefully, looking for not so carefully concealed weapons.
Lars gripped his shoulder and drew his attention back to him. “It’s possible. That’s why I wish Emilia wasn’t working today.”
Dane froze. “Emilia?”
“Yeah, she works for Penny Payne,” Lars said, pulling his hand away to gesture at the church Penny had converted into her full-service wedding planning venue. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
Dane had been trying to avoid any mention of Emilia. She had been the focus of his world for too many weeks when she’d been missing. That was why he’d been so fascinated with the photo Lars had given him to help find her. That was the only reason....
But why was his pulse quickening? Why could he feel his heart pounding faster and harder now?
“No...” Dane murmured but his reply wasn’t just for Lars. It was for himself. No.
He couldn’t see Emilia. He already saw her too much—every time he closed his damn eyes.
“She insisted on coming today,” Lars said, his voice gruff with frustration and concern. “She said it was the most important day for her boss and she wouldn’t miss it even though I tried to tell her it might not be safe.”
And Emilia had already been through so much. Dane understood his friend’s fear. Hell, he even shared it.
“Nikki was one of those hostages last time,” Lars said, his fear making his deep voice even gruffer. “She was nearly killed. So I’m going to need to keep an eye on her.”
“She’s going to hate that,” Dane reminded him. Nikki Payne was fiercely independent. There was no way she was saying yes to Lars’s proposal.
But before he could offer his friend any more advice, Lars continued, “So I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Emilia. You need to make sure nothing happens to her.” Lars’s brow was furrowed, his concern for his sister apparent.
Dane couldn’t refuse his request any more than he’d been able to ignore Cooper’s order to attend the wedding. Yeah, friendship had already caused him enough problems. He wanted nothing to do with family, romance or love.
“I also need you to talk to Emilia,” Lars said, “and make sure that, after everything she went through, she’s really okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Dane asked. “Myron Webber is dead. He can’t hurt her anymore.”
“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he’s not still hurting her,” Lars said. “She woke up with nightmares for weeks after we rescued her.”
“PTSD?” he asked.
Lars nodded. “I think so. But I never really experienced that myself. That’s why I need you to talk to her.”
“Why me?” Dane asked.
“I bunked next to you for months at a time,” Lars reminded him. “You have as many nightmares as she does.”
Dane tensed. “I don’t talk about that stuff...” Not with his friends. He certainly wasn’t going to talk to some young woman who already had enough nightmares of her own. “I can’t help her.”
Lars studied his face for a while before uttering a sigh of resignation. “Fine. Just watch out for her, make sure she doesn’t get any more nightmares from whatever the hell might happen here today.”
Just what kind of weddings did Penny Payne plan that people risked developing PTSD after them?
* * *
A lot of weddings had taken place in Penny Payne’s Little White Wedding Chapel. Some real. Some staged to flush out serial killers. Some hadn’t taken place at all. Brides had changed their minds. Or gunmen had taken the church hostage before the wedding was able to take place.
Penny wasn’t worried about this bride changing her mind. She stared at her reflection in the oval mirror in the bride’s dressing room.
Was it ridiculous that she wore a gown?
It wasn’t white. At fifty...something...and with four grown kids, that would have been ridiculous. But the tea-length, lacy bronze dress looked like a wedding gown. For the second time in her life, Penny was a bride.
Her first groom had been a boy. Together they’d grown up. And he had become a man—one who’d made mistakes. One mistake had brought a child into the world with another woman. One had gotten him killed.
She had survived both of his mistakes. But then she’d spent the next nearly two decades afraid of making a mistake of her own. So she’d focused on her kids and her business and she’d protected her heart—until that day she’d nearly lost her chapel to those gunmen.
Her kids—the ones she’d given birth to and the ones she’d claimed as hers—had saved everyone that day. But Penny had still lost something she had never intended to risk again.
Her heart.
But this groom she could trust. He wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Woodrow Lynch wouldn’t make mistakes that would hurt her. He loved her as much as she loved him.
No. She wasn’t going to back out and neither would Woodrow. Penny wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t even worried about all the minute details of a ceremony that she usually insisted on overseeing herself.
She didn’t need to do that anymore, not since she’d hired Emilia Ecklund. The beautiful blonde appeared next to her in the reflection in the mirror. She carefully pinned the tiny bronze lace veil onto Penny’s coif of auburn curls.
“You look so beautiful,” Emilia told her with such awe that Penny couldn’t doubt her sincerity. She was such a sweet, sincere young woman. “Everything’s ready.”
Penny’s heart lurched. Not with nerves over the marriage. She knew that would be good. But now a few doubts flickered in about the wedding details. Emilia had seemed kind of distracted the past few weeks. Penny opened her mouth to ask a couple of questions, just to confirm.
But Emilia shushed her with a smile. “Everything’s ready,” she repeated with calm assurance. There was not even a trace of nerves in her soft voice or on her beautiful face.
Penny believed her. Emilia had been about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in hospitality and event planning when her world had been turned upside down. After her rescue, she had been working hard to right her world again.
Maybe too hard.
Dark circles rimmed her pale blue eyes. Of course, she had an infant at home, too. New mothers rarely got enough sleep. That was probably why she’d seemed distracted lately.
Penny reached up and patted her cheek. “Thank you, Emilia, for making not just this day so special for me but for making my workload so much lighter since you started working for me.”
Emilia’s beautiful eyes glistened with unshed tears, but she blinked her long black lashes and cleared away the moisture. She smiled again, but it was as if she had to force up the corners of her mouth.
“Is everything all right?” Penny asked her.
“Yes, I told you it was,” Emilia replied. “We’re ready to start the ceremony. Are you ready?”
Penny sucked in a sharp breath. She was getting married again. She was pledging to share the rest of her life with another. She couldn’t wait. “Yes, please send my kids in here. I am raring to walk down the aisle to my groom.”
But as Emilia turned away to open the door, Penny caught her arm. The odd sensation raced over her—one of those god-awful premonitions she had that something was about to go very wrong.
Not today.
Of all days, not today...
“What is it?” Emilia asked. Alarm drained the color from her face. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Definitely not,” Penny said. “I can’t wait to marry my soul mate. But...”
“I told you, everything’s fine.”
“I’m sure you did everything right,” Penny said. “But I have that feeling...”
Emilia sucked in a sharp breath now. Penny had told her about the feelings that came over her, about her instincts that warned her when something horrible was going to happen.
“I’ll double-check everything,” her assistant assured her. “Don’t worry.”
She hurried away before Penny could stop her.
Penny couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to Emilia. She hoped she was wrong. The young woman had already been through too much.
Chapter 2 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)
Emilia’s heart pounded as she gave in to the nerves fluttering inside her. This was it, her chance to finally prove herself to her benevolent boss. Penny had been so sweet to take a chance on her, to give her not just a job but the responsibility of overseeing the woman’s wedding.
Nothing could go wrong.
But Penny’s premonitions were legendary. When she had one of her feelings that something bad was about to happen, it always did.
So Emilia didn’t waste time checking on the flowers. She already knew they were perfect. The minister had arrived, as had all the guests. The photographer had already begun taking pictures and setting up the camera to record the ceremony. The caterers were ready to serve for the reception in the banquet room in the chapel basement.
Emilia hadn’t lied when she’d assured Penny that everything was ready. For the ceremony...
But Emilia had that sense of disquiet, too, the same way that Penny did. Something bad was about to happen. That feeling compelled her to quickly cross the foyer to the steps leading down to the nearly walk-out-level basement. This was where the offices were and the banquet hall and kitchen.
And the nursery...
Along with all the Payne babies, Blue was there, too. Two nursery workers—teenage girls—watched all the children. But they were only teenagers. If someone tried to take one of the babies...
They wouldn’t be able to stop them.
But Emilia would.
She hastened her pace, her heels clicking against the stairs as she nearly ran down them. In her haste, she slipped. Her grasp on the railing kept her from tumbling to the concrete floor below. She steadied herself, finished descending the stairs and hurried down the hall.
Waiters and cooks milled around inside the banquet hall and the kitchen as she rushed past. Excitement hummed in the air. This was the wedding. The one everyone wanted to be absolutely perfect—because this was Penny’s wedding.
