Single Mum's Bodyguard

So he hurriedly explained, “I’m not stalking you. I promised your brother I would watch you at the wedding, make sure you stayed safe.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s why...” Her chin lifted, and she bristled with pride now. “Then you know I locked the door and the windows.” She gestured toward the one through which she’d seen him. “And now they’re unlocked.”

He nodded. “I did see you check the windows, but not the door.” The solid steel exterior door had no window, so he hadn’t been able to see through it.

“I locked it, too,” she insisted.

“So how did someone get in?” he asked. “Does anyone else have a key?”

“Only Lars.”

And her brother would give up his life for hers—nearly had. He would never do anything to upset her. Purposely. Asking Dane to watch over her might have upset her, though—or at least pricked her pride.

Her brow furrowed now. “But I lost my keys a couple of weeks ago. Well, just misplaced them.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I left them at the coffeehouse near the chapel. One of the baristas called me a couple of hours after I left and told me a customer had found them under a table.”

“Do you mean you called them?” he asked. “How would they know they were yours?”

“The key for the office has the name of the White Wedding Chapel on it with the phone number,” she explained. “I hadn’t even realized I’d lost them. And...”

“What?” he prodded.

“I hadn’t sat down at a table,” she said. “I got a latte to go and was only near the counter.”

He felt like he’d been punched again. “Someone could have taken them.”

“But why return them?” she asked.

“If you’d known they were stolen, you would have changed the locks,” he explained. “This way they had time to make another set and get yours back so you’d only think you’d misplaced them.”

“But why?” she asked. “Why would someone want a set of my keys? Why would they come in here and not take anything? Just use my phone and...”

“Play that recording?” he prodded when her voice trailed off.

Her breath caught. “A recording? You think it’s a recording?”

“Could be.”

“But why? Why keep playing it all night, every night?” she asked.

He’d never been captured, but he knew guys who had been—like Gage Huxton, another Payne bodyguard. “Sleep deprivation is a form of torture,” he said. “It’s used to break someone.”

That was why he had sworn, at the start of every mission, that if something went bad, he would not be taken alive.

“Break?” And her voice did again when she breathed the word. Her eyes were wide, the circles so dark beneath them. She had not been sleeping for a while. “Why?”

“Someone’s trying to drive you crazy.”

She expelled a shuddery breath. “I’m afraid it’s starting to work.”

* * *

The plan had been working. Emilia Ecklund was nearing her breaking point. All the crying wasn’t just the recording; it was her, too.

But then she’d called someone tonight. And Dane Sutton had rushed to her aide. That had nearly messed up everything. What if he’d arrived a little faster?

The whole plan could have been destroyed.

The guy was big and armed—like her brother. It might have been better had her brother showed up. He would have been more concerned about her, about how distraught she was and he probably wouldn’t have checked out the house as thoroughly as this guy had.

What had he found?

Had he seen any footprints? Any evidence that the sounds weren’t just in Emilia’s beautiful head?

Dane Sutton was a problem. A problem they would have to eliminate.

Chapter 6 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)

Did Dane really believe her? Or was he only humoring his best friend’s crazy sister? His face was so expressionless that she couldn’t tell. He looked like a statue or a bust carved from granite. His features were that chiseled, his eyes that unreadable.

His stare made her shiver. But she hadn’t been cold earlier—when he’d held her. Then she’d been hot, her body tingling with awareness. With attraction.

She sighed. “Yes, it’s definitely working.” She was losing her mind. She couldn’t be attracted to her brother’s enigmatic friend.

“You’re too strong to let that happen,” Dane said.

Despite her fears and nerves and sleeplessness, she laughed. “Strong?”

She had been going out of her mind.

“You survived weeks in captivity,” he said.

If she’d been stronger, she would not have been in captivity. She would have freed herself instead of having to wait to be rescued.

“You survived nearly losing your son,” he added.

A pang struck her heart, filling it with the fear she’d felt then when she’d thought she would never see her baby again. She glanced toward the stairs and thought of running up them, of grabbing up Blue from his crib, where he’d fallen back to sleep.

He was sleeping. He was safe. He was here—with her.

“I survived that,” she agreed. “Once. I can’t go through that again. If all of this—” she gestured at the windows and the door that she’d locked but the intruder had still managed to get through “—is so that I lose him.”