Beauty And The Bodyguard

The irony was that she’d broken his instead.

She squeezed Gage’s hand around the scissors. “Please make sure he’s okay.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said. If he walked away and left her alone and unprotected, he might never see her again. And he couldn’t risk that.

Couldn’t risk never seeing her beautiful face again, never touching her soft skin...

His free hand moved up to cup her cheek. He skimmed his thumb along her chin and tipped up her face. Then he began to lower his head...just as the doorknob rattled. Someone was trying to get inside.

* * *

Déjà vu. Nikki wasn’t like her mother or half brother with all their premonitions and instincts. She hadn’t ever experienced any psychic phenomena until now. Now she had that weird sense of déjà vu. Walking inside the bride’s dressing room gave Nikki the exact same feeling she’d had walking inside her mom’s office just moments ago. And she murmured, “I keep interrupting.”

Gage tensed, and his hand tightened around the weapon he’d drawn from beneath his tuxedo jacket before opening the door for her. “What did you interrupt? Are they making a move?”

She suspected that Woodrow Lynch had been thinking about making one on Penny before Nikki had burst into the basement office. But Penny hadn’t been very happy with the man for drawing a gun on her only daughter. She’d been even unhappier with him when he’d agreed with Nikki’s plan to switch places with his daughter.

If something happened to her, she doubted her mother would ever forgive the FBI chief. So she had to make sure nothing happened to her.

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“What do they want?” Megan asked.

Nikki exchanged a glance with Gage. They were both pretty sure they wanted the bride. Even Woodrow and Penny had agreed about that.

“It doesn’t matter what they want,” Gage said. “We’re not going to let them get it.” He held up his cell. “It’s completely dead now. Didn’t you find your mom’s jammer?”

“It’s not hers.”

He sucked in a breath.

“Her landline was cut, too.”

Still standing guard at the door, he opened it a crack and peeked out. “Where are all the guests?”

“The wedding isn’t supposed to start until noon,” Megan said. “We have a half hour yet.”

“People usually arrive a half hour early,” replied the daughter of the wedding planner. Nikki had grown up knowing about weddings—and never planning to have one herself.

Even before she’d learned about her dad’s betrayal, she’d never wanted a husband of her own. She’d had enough males in her life with her overprotective brothers. Occasionally, she got lonely, though...

Occasionally, she missed that kind of tension she’d felt in her mother’s office and when she’d walked into the bride’s dressing room. Then again, she wasn’t certain she’d ever felt that kind of tension herself.

“Do you think they have someone posted outside the doors?” Gage asked. “Turning guests away?”

“They’ve planned this out,” Nikki said. “So yeah, probably.”

“Wouldn’t that draw suspicion?” Megan asked.

“They’re probably telling everyone the wedding was canceled,” Nikki said. “And the guests who know about your past—” she jerked her thumb at Gage “—and his return from the dead probably wouldn’t question it.”

“But how would those gunmen know about that—” her face reddened as Megan asked “—about us?”

Unless...

Maybe this siege on the church wasn’t about revenge on the bride’s father. Maybe it was about revenge on the bride’s ex-lover.

Because it was clear that hurting Megan would hurt Gage. Nikki narrowed her eyes and studied Gage’s face. He was even tenser now than when he’d opened the door to her, his handsome features so tight his face looked like a granite mask—hard and sharp—like his green eyes.

He’d obviously considered the same thing she had. And he didn’t like it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nikki told them both. “What matters is everyone getting out of here alive.”

Gage looked at her then, his glance one of pity for her naïveté. She wasn’t so stupid that she hadn’t considered the other alternatives. She already knew there was a strong possibility that they wouldn’t survive.

Then she would never experience that tension she’d felt in her mom’s office and in this room. But you couldn’t miss what you’d never had.

She held up the one useful item she had retrieved from her mother’s office.

Gage stared at the small tool. “What the hell is that?”

“Crochet hook,” she replied. “This’ll get those buttons undone.”

“That’s what your mom used to do it up,” Megan said. And she released a ragged breath, as if the dress was constricting her lungs. Maybe it was. It looked tight and heavy and uncomfortable as hell.

Nikki couldn’t wait to get it on and put her plan into motion, even though it could quite possibly be the last thing she would ever do.

* * *

Megan jerked away as Nikki reached for her. Sure, she wanted out of that dress—so badly that she hadn’t even cared if Gage was the one to cut it off her. But it was different now, different since he’d nearly kissed her again.

Wasn’t that what he’d been about to do before Nikki had started turning the doorknob? He’d been lowering his head, and his eyes had gone dark, the pupils dilating as he’d stared down at her. He’d looked like he’d wanted to kiss her, just like he’d looked that first day in her father’s kitchen.

Now that all the old memories and feelings and longings washed over her, she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to have him watch her get undressed and know that he wouldn’t touch her—wouldn’t kiss her.

Not that she wanted him to.

She didn’t want to put herself through all that pain again, no matter how much she probably deserved it. She’d hurt Gage. And now she was about to hurt another man, if he hadn’t already been harmed.

“You said you’d check on Richard,” she reminded Gage.

“I said that I couldn’t,” he corrected her.

“Because you couldn’t leave me alone,” she said. “But I’m not alone.” Nikki had a gun. And Megan had the scissors. Gage had pressed them back into her hand before he’d drawn his gun and opened the door.

Nikki nodded. “I’ll protect her and get her out of the dress,” she said. “You should check on the groom. We don’t know what the hell could have happened to him.”

Megan’s stomach lurched, and a gasp slipped through her lips.