Groom Under Fire. Lisa Childs
one of his brother’s derisive snorts as if he didn’t believe her. “Did you tell Stephen that, too?”
Her palm itched to slap him as her sister had slapped her. Her cheek throbbed at just the memory of that blow—or maybe because she’d hit it again when she’d done the nosedive running away from the car. Bristling with anger and with guilt over Stephen’s disappearance, she said nothing as they climbed the stairs to her apartment.
Since he had the keys he’d gotten from her landlord, he unlocked the door and stepped inside first, as if checking again for an intruder. Then he flipped on the lights.
A banker’s box had been knocked over, the contents spilled across the library table that also served as her dining table and desk. She gasped. “Someone was in here?”
He shook his head. “Not that I could tell.”
“You did this?” He must have gone through her things in a hurry. Maybe he hadn’t had time to look through her closet and drawers. She glanced around, but it appeared nothing else had been disturbed. So she focused again on the contents of the box. All those threats...
She had packed them away—hoping to forget them but not foolish enough to throw them all out.
“You haven’t exactly been forthcoming with information,” he bitterly reminded her. “If we’re going to find Stephen, we need to know everything.”
If...
She wasn’t naive. She knew it was very likely that they would never find Stephen...either alive or dead. But she wasn’t ready to face that possibility. She would have preferred Cooper offer assurances and promises. But she knew him better than that. He would never give her what she wanted from him—at least he hadn’t when they were teenagers.
“There isn’t much to tell you,” she said, especially when it came to exes. “I haven’t really dated much.” Because of the threats. And maybe because of him, but she didn’t want him to suspect that she’d hung on to an old crush. “I’ve been too busy with work.”
“How long have you been a social worker?” he asked. “Since you graduated college? You must have handled a lot of cases.”
She sighed as faces jumbled in her mind. “A lot,” she agreed, “but none recently. At least not personally. I became a supervisor four years ago. I delegate now.” Which meant giving too much work to too few employees.
“Now,” he said. “But four years ago there must have been cases you handled that hadn’t gone well.”
She flinched, remembering the losses. The people she hadn’t been able to help. If she had Grandfather’s money, she could do so much more than she was able to do now. “Of course there were cases that went badly. Children I had to remove from neglectful or abusive parents.” She shuddered at the painful memories. “But that was years ago...”
“Some people have a hard time forgiving the person they perceive tore their family apart,” he said with a glance out toward the street. “Mom says Logan has never missed a parole hearing for the man who shot my father. He’s determined to make sure that the guy never gets out of prison—at least not alive.”
“What about you?” she asked. He had never talked about his father’s death before, but back then it had been too recent and probably too painful for a teenage boy to process let alone express.
“What about me?” he asked as if his feelings didn’t matter. “I haven’t been here for any of the parole hearings.” And maybe that was why he thought his feelings didn’t matter—because he had been gone so long. He had left his family.
And her. But they’d only just been friends, high school friends who often drifted apart after graduation. She hadn’t really meant anything to him. But she knew that his family had meant everything to him.
“If you had been here, would you have gone to those hearings?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s best to leave the past in the past.”
She and Stephen were his past.
“But most people don’t feel that way,” he continued. He passed her a legal pad and a pen. “Write down the names of the guys you’ve dated. And write down any cases you remember where someone might be holding a grudge against you.”
“I really can’t,” she protested. “There are privacy laws I have to obey.”
“What about Stephen?”
He was her best friend. And he was missing. If there was any chance of getting him back, her pride and her job could be damned. So she wrote down some names.
“He knew,” she said, finally defending herself from his earlier comment. “Stephen knew about the threats.”
Cooper sucked in a breath. “And he wanted to marry you anyway? He must love you a lot.”
As a friend. But if she told Cooper that, he would think the same thing her sister did—that she was just using Stephen to get her inheritance.
“I love him a lot, too,” she said. But only as a friend.
Cooper’s jaw went rigid again, as if he was clenching it. He nodded. “Stephen’s a good man. And a lawyer. Your grandfather would have approved.”
Probably, but only until she’d given away all his ruthlessly earned money.
“We have to find him,” she said. And she couldn’t rely on an overworked police department. “I really can’t afford Payne Protection—not until I get my inheritance. But I want to hire your family.” They specialized in security, working mainly as bodyguards, but Logan and Parker were both former police officers. And Cooper was...Cooper. The kind of man who stopped a speeding car from barreling over a woman.
Had she even thanked him? She couldn’t remember now; it had all been such a blur of terror and disbelief and then relief.
His brow furrowed with confusion. “We’re already on the job. Why do you think I showed up at the church in the first place?”
She had been so upset over finding the blood in the empty groom’s quarters that she hadn’t given it much thought then. “I don’t know...maybe you had changed your mind about being Stephen’s best man.”
But that wasn’t the case. She already knew that from when she’d eavesdropped outside the bride’s room. He had been pretty clear that he’d wanted no part of his mother’s manipulations. Why had the wedding planner been so intent on getting Cooper to attend the ceremony? It wasn’t as if he would have stood up and protested their union—at least not to claim her as his bride. Definitely not to claim her as his bride...
“I wish I had agreed to be his best man,” Cooper admitted. “Then I would have been there...”
Her heart lurched. “And you could have been hurt, too.” Or worse...
Just as his brother had said while they’d waited for him to make sure her apartment was safe, he reminded her, “I can take care of myself.”
Cooper wouldn’t have gone anywhere willingly. Not that Stephen had. Poor Stephen...
“And I can take care of you, too,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
He had already proven that—when he’d stopped a speeding car.
“That’s why I showed up at the church,” he said. He scooped up some of the shriveled petals that had fallen from the black roses. “Mom took the delivery of these and knew something was wrong.”
“I’m sorry I brought your mother into this,” she said, suspecting that could have been the reason for some of his anger earlier. “I thought those threats were empty. I didn’t believe anyone would actually act on them.” Or she would have never agreed to marry her best friend. “I’ve been getting them for years...”
“How many years?” he asked.