Beauty And The Bodyguard

Nikki shook her head. “Then I won’t be able to put it on and switch places with you.”

Gage already knew Nikki was smart. She’d helped Nick figure out why someone was really after him and Annalise. He was impressed as hell that she’d already come up with a plan to protect Megan. His only instinct had been to get to Megan and get her out.

But just like police couldn’t come in with sirens wailing, he couldn’t sneak Megan out in that damn sparkling gown without drawing attention, either. And if, as he suspected, the armed people were here for her, they wouldn’t let him just walk out with her without one hell of a fight.

“You get word to Nick,” he said. “I’ll get Megan out of the gown.”

Nikki nodded in agreement before opening the door and slipping out into the foyer. She disappeared before Gage fully realized what he’d agreed to do: he was going to undress Megan.

* * *

“Wait,” Megan called out, her voice a faint croak in her suddenly dry throat. But Nikki Payne was already gone, leaving her alone with Gage.

She would rather have taken her chances with the armed gunmen. After all, there were only three of them. That wasn’t nearly as dangerous as one Gage Huxton.

“She’ll be okay,” Gage assured her.

She flinched from a pang of guilt. Of course she should have been concerned about Nikki’s safety. “She seems pretty tough,” she said. Despite her petite size.

“She has three older brothers,” Gage said. “Four, actually, with Nick.”

“I know,” Megan said. “Mrs. Payne—” The wedding planner was insistent that Megan use her first name. “Penny has told me all about her sons. And she counts Nick among them.”

Even though she hadn’t given birth to him. While Megan knew someone else who’d loved a child that wasn’t really his, she still considered Penny Payne to be very special. Megan had realized that the first time they’d met. Penny was intuitive and empathetic. She’d understood Megan’s pain—her grief over thinking Gage was dead—because Penny had lost her husband. But Gage wasn’t Megan’s husband, and she doubted that he would ever be.

“Penny’s great.” Gage’s mouth curved into a faint grin. “And her sons, they’re good guys. They’ll come with Nick for backup. It’s going to be okay.”

Megan released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Of course everything was going to be okay. She wasn’t even convinced that they were really in danger. Nikki and Gage could have been overreacting.

But she somehow doubted that.

“You’ll still be able to get married today,” Gage continued.

Maybe she would be able to, but she had no intention of exchanging vows. She couldn’t promise to love any man but Gage. He didn’t want her love, though. He apparently didn’t even want to touch her.

But then his hands were on her shoulders again. He didn’t hold her, though. He only turned her so that her back was to him. Then his fingers skimmed down the line of buttons on her back. “Nikki didn’t undo many of these,” he mused.

Just enough that she could feel the brush of his fingertips across an inch of her spine. She suppressed a shiver of reaction. She had always reacted to his touch.

“They’re tiny,” she said. Every fitting with the seamstress had taken so long, just getting her in and out of the dress.

“They’re also slippery as hell,” he said with a grunt.

They were clear, either crystal or glass, like the sparkling rhinestones on the bodice of the gown.

“And it’s like the holes are too small for them,” he mused. “I can’t get them through.”

Her hand shaking, she held up the scissors again. “I think you just need to cut it off.”

He stepped around her, his brow furrowing as he stared down at her. “Why would you want to destroy your wedding gown?”

Because it wasn’t really her gown...

She never would have chosen anything so ostentatious for herself. She’d wanted simple and elegant, like the gown her mother had worn. Her father had even taken it out of storage for her. Megan hadn’t wanted lace. And certainly no rhinestones. In the elaborate, sparkly gown, she felt more like a beauty contestant than a bride.

“I just want it off,” she murmured as panic began to overwhelm her. She didn’t care about the possibility of armed gunmen in the church. She just didn’t want to get married. Now or ever...

It wasn’t as if she needed a husband to have children. She could be a single parent. Like her father had been. Like Penny Payne.

“Don’t worry,” Gage assured her. “Nikki and I won’t let anything happen to you. She has a good plan, switching places with you.”

She wasn’t as convinced as they were. “Putting her in danger in my place—that’s not a good idea.”

“Nikki’s tough,” he reminded her.

“We don’t need to go to all that trouble,” she said. “We can just cancel the wedding.”

He shook his head. “I told you that I’d make sure the wedding happened.”

She shivered now, but it wasn’t in reaction to his touch; it was because of the coldness in his eyes and his voice. He hadn’t changed his mind. He wanted her to marry another man, probably any man but him.

“But if those people brought guns in here to stop the wedding...”

His brow furrowed more. “We don’t know why they brought guns in here.”

“Nikki thinks they want revenge on my father and that they intend to use me to do it,” she said.

Her stomach clenched with dread at the thought. She never wanted to cause her father any pain. He’d already been through too much when he’d lost her mother so many years ago.

“We don’t know that for certain,” he said.

Maybe they didn’t intend to hurt her. Maybe they intended to hurt her father when they figured his guard would be down—when he’d be distracted with his daughter’s happiness. But he already knew his daughter wasn’t happy. He’d been so worried about her.

Now she was worried about him. Where was her father? Was he okay?

“You need to find my dad,” she urged him.

Gage shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.”

She would have been touched had she thought he actually cared. But he was only doing his job. She tried to remind herself of that when he turned her around and attacked the buttons of her gown again. She tried to remind herself that he wasn’t undressing her for the reason he’d undressed her so many times before.

He didn’t want her naked. He didn’t want her at all.

* * *

“Why would you say I’m in danger?” Penny Payne asked as she closed her office door behind Woodrow.

“You saw the gunmen.” He’d been watching her when she’d noticed them. That was why he’d pulled her aside before she could confront them. He wouldn’t have put it past her. She was that protective of her chapel and her brides.