Explosive Engagement. Lisa Childs
of the church aglow. It was a great day for a wedding. But Logan Payne couldn’t forget that a funeral was also taking place today. He’d thought it might finally bring him some peace that his father’s killer was dead. But it seemed more like an injustice that the man had lived for only fifteen years of his already too short sentence.
Maybe it was that sense of injustice that had made Logan uneasy. Or maybe it was the recent attempts on his life.
But he pushed aside that uneasiness and focused instead on the bride and groom. He lifted his hand, with birdseed stuck to his palm, and waved off his younger brother and his new bride. Nobody deserved happiness more than the two of them—especially after the hell they had endured to be together.
His sister, Nikki, glanced up at him through the tears glistening in her warm brown eyes. “Getting emotional, big bro?” she teased. Their family relentlessly teased each other.
The tears were all hers, but he played along. “Birdseed got in my eye,” he said with an exaggerated blink. But then he squinted at a random glare and glanced toward the street where his brother’s decorated SUV sat on the curb. Nikki had written Just Married across the back window and tied strings of pop cans to the rear bumper. A car slowly passed it, and as it did, a barrel protruded out of the dark tinted driver’s window.
The SUV shielded the bride and groom, but Logan and his sister and his twin were exposed on the steps of the church. As the shots rang out, he knocked Nikki down and lunged at Parker, knocking him over the railing.
The shots weren’t meant for any of his siblings. He knew that. But he had been standing too close to Nikki. And his twin was identical—same black hair, same blue eyes, same features. Today they were even both wearing black tuxedos. Logan covered Nikki’s petite frame, shielding her with his body. And he tensed, waiting for the bullets to find their target in his flesh.
Tires squealed as the car rounded the corner and drove off. After a glance over his shoulder to make certain the shooter was gone, Logan helped his sister to her feet. She trembled with fear in his arms, but she was unhurt. Miraculously, Logan hadn’t been hit, either.
The bride, Tanya, turned away from the SUV and ran back to the church. The groom, Cooper, was right beside her, yelling the name of his missing brother. “Parker!”
A hand rose above the shrubs on the side of the church’s wide front steps. Cooper clasped it and pulled Parker from the branches and foliage.
“You okay?” Cooper asked him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Parker replied as he brushed off his tux. “Logan knocked me over and pushed down Nikki.” He waited—probably for Logan to make some smart-aleck comeback. That was the way the Paynes handled stuff—emotional stuff, dangerous stuff...with gallows humor.
But Logan couldn’t find any humor in this situation. The grudge he’d been carrying, and how he’d acted on that grudge, was what had nearly killed his family. And these weren’t the first attempts made on his life and Parker’s, who must have been mistaken for him then, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
His new sister-in-law’s voice trembled with concern as she said, “I thought it was over. Mr. Gregory is dead.”
Logan had been the one who’d taken the shot that had ended the life of her grandfather’s lawyer. The man had been trying to kill her so that no one would discover that he’d embezzled her inheritance.
“This isn’t about you,” Logan assured the beautiful blonde bride. Guilt twisted his guts into knots. He hated that this shooting—that his problem—had marred what had finally been the perfect wedding for Tanya and Cooper. “This is about me. And revenge...”
Cooper’s eyes, which were the same blue as his and Parker’s, narrowed with suspicion, and he accused him, “You know who it is.”
Anger, more intense and overwhelming than his guilt, surged through Logan. He knew who was behind all these cowardly shootings. He knew and he was damn well going to put a stop to it.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in fifteen years, Stacy Kozminski didn’t have to go through prison security to see her father. All she had to do was walk up the aisle of the dimly lit church to where he lay in a casket before the altar. But that walk was the most difficult she had ever taken. Her knees trembled with each step she took, shaking more the closer she got to the altar.
To the casket...
The lid was open, but she needed to take a few more steps to see past the flower arrangements. Her knees shook even harder, threatening to give out beneath her. Maybe she would have crumpled right there, but a strong arm wrapped around her waist in support.
She uttered a sigh of relief that at least one of her brothers had showed up...because she had been the first and only family member to arrive at the church. With a smile on her lips, she turned her head, but the smile froze when her gaze collided with Logan Payne’s.
His blue eyes icy hard with anger, he stared down at her.
He was mad at her? She was the one who should be angry—furious even because he had no right to show up at her father’s funeral at all—let alone wearing a tuxedo. Her heart skipped a beat before the rate sped up. He looked damn good in the black tux with the pleated white shirt. The black bow tie had already been undone and the once-white silk shirt was a little smudged and rumpled. But still...
She hated him; she reminded herself of that as she jerked away from the unsettling warmth of his long, hard body. “What the hell are you doing here?”
And why had he put his arm around her? He was the last person from whom she would ever expect support—especially today.
“I think you know,” he replied, his deep voice vibrating with anger.
She shook her head. “I have no idea...unless you want to make sure that he’s really dead...”
With a trembling hand, she gestured toward the casket and toppled over one of the flower arrangements. The vase rolled across the tiled floor, leaving a trail of multicolored petals and water behind it. She gasped at what she’d done.
But Logan Payne didn’t react. He was staring at the casket. Maybe she had been right about his reason for coming.
She followed his gaze to her father’s corpse. She’d already seen it when he’d died. She had made it to the prison in time to say goodbye. Wasn’t that supposed to have given her closure?
Stacy felt no calm acceptance. No gratefulness. She felt nothing but anger—all toward Logan Payne. So she turned back to him, and then she turned on him. Literally lashing out at him in her anger, she swung her hand toward his unfairly handsome face.
The man had some crazy reflexes, because he caught her wrist, stopping her palm just short of one of his chiseled cheekbones. Despite not slapping him, her skin tingled—maybe with the need to slap him yet. Maybe because he was touching her, his long fingers wrapped easily and tightly around her narrow wrist.
“I can’t believe even you are such a heartless bastard that you’d show up at my father’s funeral,” she said, lashing out now with her words. “And in a tux, no less.”
He glanced down at himself, as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing.
“But then I guess this is a celebration for you,” she continued. “Do you intend to dance on his grave at the cemetery, too?”
She would make damn sure of it that he never got the chance—even if she had to throw him out herself since no other mourners had arrived yet. Where the hell were her brothers?
They had always been there for her when she needed them most. Until today...
“I’ve already been dancing,” Logan replied.
She struggled against his grasp; she didn’t want a man capable of such a hateful comment touching her.
“At my brother’s wedding,”