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He brushed a kiss on her cheek, took her by the hand and led her to a pew at the back of the church. “I’ll go over everything with you after I’ve spoken to Colonel Shaw.”
“In other words, there’s something you don’t want me to know.” And by the time he did tell her, it most certainly wouldn’t be everything. It would have been processed through layers and layers of debriefings until it was sanitized beyond recognition. “Who was out there?”
“Rafe?” Shaw again. “Come over here. I need a word with you.”
Anna grabbed his arm. “I want to know what happened.”
It seemed as if he was about to tell her, but then Shaw repeated the order he’d given just moments earlier. “It won’t take long,” the colonel added. This time, there was some impatience in his voice.
“We’ll talk later,” Rafe assured her. “And don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
“It’ll be fine when you tell me—”
“Not now, Kate,” he snapped. Rafe started to walk away but then came to a complete halt.
Kate.
He’d called her Kate, the name of Colonel Shaw’s latest girlfriend.
Anna stared at him and felt her blood run cold.
Oh, my God. Who was this man she’d just married?
Who?
One thing was for certain, it wasn’t Rafe McQuade. Behind those familiar eyes and face, her husband was a stranger.
Chapter Two
Kate.
He’d called her Kate. Talk about a stupid mistake. It could jeopardize everything.
Rafe stared at her while he quickly tried to come up with an apology. Or at least a reasonable explanation. But she didn’t look very receptive to whatever he had to say. There were a lot of questions in her eyes. And doubts. Doubts that he’d put there with that slip of the tongue.
How the devil could he have gotten her name wrong?
He lifted his hand to Colonel Shaw in a wait-a-minute gesture and went toward her. She stepped back. Not once. Twice. A clear signal that this wasn’t a good time to try to pull her into his arms.
“Why?” she asked, shaking her head. That wasn’t the only thing shaking. Her bottom lip was none too steady.
“Because I made a mistake.” It was a good start, but he was a long way from undoing the damage.
“Because I was scared. The thought of losing you has a way of doing that to me. Believe me, I know who you are.”
“Do you?” she demanded.
It wasn’t anger he heard in her voice but fear. He would have preferred the anger.
“I know,” he assured her. “You’re Anna, the woman I love. The woman I married.” He eased closer. Baby steps. And kept eye contact with her. Until he could finally reach out and touch her. He ran his fingers along her arm and rubbed gently.
“And I’m so sorry.”
Her breath settled a little. It wasn’t an acceptance by a long shot, but it would have to do for now. Behind him, he could hear Colonel Shaw’s impatient murmurings.
“I really need to do this debriefing,” Rafe continued. “But when we’re done, we’ll talk. And if necessary I’ll do some groveling, okay?” He threw in a grin, but it did nothing to soothe the tension on her face.
Rafe waited a moment to see if she had anything to say. She didn’t. Anna only stared at him.
All right. So, this wasn’t a five-minute fix. Not that he’d thought it would be. It was yet another contingency, a bad one, in a day already filled to the brim with contingencies.
“I won’t be long.” He gave her arm a gentle squeeze, turned and went to his boss.
“Problem?” Shaw asked the moment Rafe joined him on the other side of the church.
Rafe hesitated, debating how much he should tell, but from his boss’s demeanor, he already had enough to deal with. “I can handle it. What’s the situation with the shooter?”
“The guy’s alive but not talking. No ID on him, but they might be able to get something when they run his prints.”
It was a long shot, and they both knew it. “Any idea what he was doing out there?”
“He tried to tamper with the communication equipment. The team scoured the area and didn’t find anyone else. Seems he was working alone.”
Rafe had already figured that part out for himself, but it was good to hear his commanding officer verify it. If there had been others, they wouldn’t be having this conversation, and his bride wouldn’t be in the pew staring craters in him. The three of them would still be in the dark waiting for the remainder of Alpha Team to contain the situation.
He almost wished they were still waiting it out. Then, he’d have a second chance to take back what he said to Anna.
“I’ve got someone checking over the equipment to make sure everything is fine,” Shaw said, his explanation low enough that Anna wouldn’t be able to hear. “And it looks as if we’ll have an all clear for you two to leave in a couple of minutes. I’ll stay here to wrap up things.”
Rafe made a sound of agreement and issued an obligatory thanks and farewell to the photographer when he hurried out the door. The guy looked scared out of his mind, and probably was. A definite case of the wrong place at the wrong time, but at least everyone was alive. It could have been much worse.
Much worse.
Shaw tipped his head to Anna and kept his voice to a whisper. “Is she all right?”
Rafe wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t. Besides, with that stunned expression on her face, it was obvious that she was far from all right. “I called her by the wrong name.”
“Hell,” Shaw mumbled. “How did you explain that?”
“Slip of the tongue. The pressure of the situation. Imperfection.” But it wasn’t the explanation or excuses that mattered. “Sir, I’m not sure she believes me.”
The colonel added another four-letter profanity. “I’ll do some damage control,” Shaw assured him, his voice a low, rough bark. “Anna trusts me.”
It was true, but Rafe almost wished she didn’t. If Shaw had been just another officer assigned to Alpha Team and hadn’t been close friends with Anna’s late father, then maybe the colonel would have come up with a different plan.
One that didn’t involve a wedding by direct order.
“She’ll find out, eventually,” Rafe said more to himself than to Colonel Shaw. From all accounts Anna was a bright woman, and he was bound to make other slipups. Sooner or later, she’d catch on.
If she hadn’t already.
Shaw looked him straight in the eye. “But she won’t find out until this is over, understand? I won’t have you jeopardize the lives of those men—or her—because your conscience is bothering you.”
“It isn’t my conscience that’s giving me a problem, sir. It’s the notion that we could have gone about this in a different way. We shouldn’t have involved her in this.”
“She’s involved whether you want her to be or not,” Shaw declared. “Besides, Anna wanted this marriage.”
He could have argued that. He could have reminded the colonel that Anna Caldwell actually wanted to marry Captain Rafe McQuade. When Anna learned that he wasn’t that man, she wouldn’t be pleased. Worse, there was nothing he could do to stop it. Things had already been set into motion.
Hell, legally he was married to her.
“Just stick with the plan,” Shaw continued. He motioned for a team member, Special Agent Luke Buchanan, to join them when he entered the church. “We’re too deep into this to back out now. Other than putting her under lock and key, this is the best way to keep her safe.”
Rafe was afraid that’s what the colonel would say. It didn’t make it easier to swallow. “But what about the reception? We’re expected there.” In fact, it was more than expected. It was a vital part of the plan to generate some publicity.
Shaw blew out a long, frustrated breath. “We’ll postpone it. I don’t want you out in the open, not after what just happened. I’ll come up with an excuse why neither of you can be there.”
Rafe followed that through to its logical conclusion. If Anna and he didn’t go to the reception, there would be no public appearance. No picture of the happy bride and groom in tomorrow’s newspaper. No illusion to build a safety net for Anna and the others. And no diversion for him to make a much-needed exit.
Rafe repeated the four-letter word the colonel had just used.
Shaw checked his watch. “The limo will take you and Anna to the VIP quarters at the base. I’ll be here for the next few hours if you need to get in touch with me.”
VIP quarters. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to work tonight. Shaw didn’t give him a chance to remind him of that, but instead stepped away and headed toward Anna. Rafe watched as his boss took his bride’s hand and urged her to her feet. Shaw leaned closer and whispered something that had her offering him a thin smile.
“It’s apparently show time,” Special Agent Buchanan mumbled when he walked closer to Rafe. “Again.”
Yep. Show time was the right term for it. For the last three days, that was pretty much what all of them had done. It turned Rafe’s stomach.
“By the way,” Buchanan went on, “have I mentioned that I’ll tear you limb from limb if you don’t do everything in your power to stop Anna from getting hurt?”
“At least a hundred freaking times.” But Rafe didn’t hold the man’s Neanderthal threat against him. Buchanan knew Anna and the other Alpha Team members. They weren’t friends exactly, but this had to be taking a toll on him.
Too bad, though, that Rafe didn’t see a way around this. He had to continue this charade, which would likely end with an innocent woman having her heart broken. It was the epitome of a rock and a hard place. And Anna was in the middle of it simply because she’d had the rotten luck to fall in love with the wrong guy.
He glanced over Buchanan’s shoulder and saw the colonel and her making their way toward them. For a brief second, their gazes connected, but she quickly looked away. So, despite Shaw’s confidence in his pseudo-fatherly relationship with Anna, he hadn’t been able to smooth things over, after all.
“I was just telling Anna about that mud-for-brains idiot who thought it was a good idea to try to steal our equipment,” Shaw announced. “Rafe winged the guy, but he’ll be all right.” The colonel passed the bouquet to her, and she gripped on to it as if it were a lifeline. “She’s still a little shaken up. Heck, we all are. Right, Rafe?”
He mumbled a mandatory agreement and even tossed in one of his grins.
“How about it—are you sure you’re okay?” Buchanan asked her.
Rafe didn’t think it was his imagination that she gave Buchanan a suspicious glance, as well. With reason. Anna was probably trying to decide if she could trust any of them.
She finally nodded in response to Buchanan’s question. “So, I guess you anticipated something like this might happen, or you wouldn’t have had men outside the church?”
Rafe didn’t even try to answer that. Thankfully, Colonel Shaw took the lead. “We didn’t want to take any chances. Good thing, too, huh?”
“Yes. A good thing.” But she didn’t sound at all sure of the colonel’s explanation.
Colonel Shaw put his arm around her shoulder. “Since you’re probably not in a party mood, I thought it might be a good idea if we postpone the reception for a few days. Maybe you and Rafe could just go to the VIP quarters and leave for your honeymoon first thing in the morning? Don’t worry. I’ll let the guests know what’s going on.”
She eased out of his grip. “Was that man connected to the rebels who held Rafe hostage?”
“From all accounts, no, but we’ll check him out. Don’t worry. By tomorrow, we’ll know everything about him, including his brand of toothpaste.” Colonel Shaw looked at Buchanan and motioned toward the door. “Why don’t you and I make sure the limo’s ready?”
Rafe mentally cursed. This was a ploy to get him alone with Anna. It was Shaw’s way of telling him to finish the damage control he started.
“So we’re staying at the base?” Anna asked. Probably because the other two men walked away without answering her, she turned to him. “Is that where we’re spending our honeymoon?”
Forcing himself to move, he hooked his arm around her neck. “Nope. That’s a surprise, darling. We’ll just stay the night there in case the local cops need to talk to me about the shooting.”
At least that was probably how the plan would work. They would have to wait in quarters until he got further orders from Shaw.
“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened,” he told her. “For the shooting and that stupid thing I said earlier. I’ll do that groveling now if you like.”
He said it lightheartedly, but there was nothing humorous about the look that Anna gave him. However, it didn’t last long. By degrees, her expression softened. Or something. A frustrated sigh left her mouth, and she stepped into his arms as if she belonged there.
“I’m scared,” she confessed. “And I’m tired of feeling this way. I just want things to be normal again.”
Rafe automatically tightened his grip around her. “I know.”
“It was just such a shock when you called me Kate. I mean, you’ve never done anything like that before. I always think of you as, well, unshakeable.” She buried her face against his neck. “I guess the pressure got to you.”
“Oh, yes. It definitely got to me. I’ll try very hard not to let it happen again.”
But now what? He could go two directions with this. He could blow it off and try to make her laugh. Or he could confess that he was scared, too. Damn scared. He didn’t have time for either.
Anna came up on her toes, with plans to kiss him no doubt. It certainly wouldn’t be the first kiss they’d shared, but from all the signals she was giving, it wouldn’t be chaste like the one at the altar.
He was right.
She wound her arm around his neck, her eyelashes fluttered down, and she fit her mouth to his.
It sure wasn’t innocent. Nowhere near it. It was the kind of kiss a woman gave her new husband.
Hot. Needy. Raw.
Still, he didn’t stop it. Nor did he pull away from her or do what he’d done for the past three days—make some stupid joke to break the tension. He just stood there and enjoyed a great kiss that he had no business enjoying.
She gripped the front of his jacket and pressed herself against him. Her breasts against his chest. It didn’t matter if he shouldn’t react, he did. But then his body didn’t seem to understand that this was a game he had to play. A sick game with lives at stake.
He cursed himself. He had no right to kiss her this way. None. And yet he had no way to stop it. If Shaw’s plan was to work, then Anna had to believe he was the man she’d fallen in love with months earlier.
She broke the kiss but kept her mouth close to his. So close that he could still taste her. “I want to make sure that we’re okay,” she whispered.
He didn’t have to fake a laugh, even though this one was filled with frustration. “Oh, we’re okay.”
