Groom Under Fire

“Yeah,” Nikki agreed. “You guys just punched each other. It was more civilized.”

“We never punched you,” he said.

“No,” she agreed with a heavy sigh, almost as if she was disappointed that they hadn’t. As the youngest and the only girl with three older brothers, she had often been left out of their roughhousing because they hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

Tanya and her sister didn’t have that relationship. Rochelle had definitely wanted to hurt her. How badly, though?

He could understand Rochelle being resentful of her sister. Tanya was far more beautiful—with more delicate features and blonder hair and a thinner figure than her sister. But how deep was that resentment?

“Why’d you bring her here?” Cooper asked. At least he hoped Nikki had been the driver.

“She’s Tanya’s maid of honor,” she replied. “I’ve been looking for her all night to make sure she got to the rehearsal.”

“Mom put you to work, too?”

She sighed. “Enlisted me as part of the wedding party. I think she suspected there’d be a problem with Rochelle, and she and I have known each other since high school.”

“You did subdue her.” So much so that the woman sat quietly in a pew now, tears streaming down her flushed face. She seemed more distraught over the groom’s disappearance than the bride was.

“Please point that out to Logan,” Nikki beseeched him. Their eldest brother was on the other side of the heavy oak doors, talking on his cell phone in the vestibule. She shot him a glare through the windows at the back of the chapel. “He keeps me tied to a desk. He refuses to let me do an actual physical protection assignment.”

Cooper bit his tongue before he verbally agreed with Logan. Nikki was so petite and fragile looking—just like their mother with her copper-colored hair and big brown eyes. But she had handled herself remarkably well with the taller and heavier Chesterfield sister. He touched her scratched cheek, making her wince again.

“Hey, I didn’t want to hurt her,” Nikki explained. “Or I would have taken her down faster. She’s a friend, though...” Then she reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry about Stephen. Do you have any idea what happened?”

“We don’t know anything for certain. There’s a hell of a lot of blood in the groom’s quarters. But until the crime lab does a DNA test, we don’t even know for certain that it’s his.” Except if it wasn’t, where the hell was he, then? If there wasn’t all that blood, Cooper might have believed his friend had just gotten a case of cold feet. He might have believed that if Stephen was marrying any woman but Tanya.

“Mom confirmed he was the only one in the room,” Nikki said.

“Where was his best man?” Cooper asked.

Nikki lifted a reddish brow. “Where was he?” she asked, obviously referring to him.

“I told him I couldn’t do it,” Cooper reminded his little sister.

“Why not?”

“Why?” Cooper asked. “Why did he even ask me? We haven’t seen each other in years.”

“He showed up at the house to see you every time you were home on leave,” Nikki said. “He stayed in touch.”

But they’d both been busy. The letters few and far between and Cooper’s visits home even more infrequent. He shrugged. “I just thought it was weird that he didn’t have a closer friend he wanted to stand up there with him.”

And weirder that he wanted Cooper. They had been good friends in high school—so good that Stephen must have realized how Cooper had really felt about Tanya. Had he wanted to rub his face in the fact he’d gotten the girl Cooper had wanted? And if so, then they hadn’t really been that good of friends.

But Cooper still cared about him—still wanted him safe—which he probably would have been had Cooper actually been his best man. Then Stephen wouldn’t have been alone in the groom’s quarters.

“There are a couple of guys who were planning on standing up there with him,” Nikki said. “A friend from his office and a cousin, but I recruited them to help me find Rochelle. We’d been searching all the bars in River City.”

“How’d you know that’s where she was?” Maybe Logan was underestimating their sister’s potential as a security expert.

“She left me a drunk voice mail.”

Cooper glanced over at the crying woman and sighed. “So interrogating her would probably be a waste of time until Mom gets more coffee in her.”

“You don’t need to interrogate her,” Tanya said as she rejoined them with an ice pack pressed against the cheek her sister had viciously slapped.

Apparently his mother was prepared for every wedding emergency—even catfights between the bride and maid of honor. What was her plan to handle a missing groom?

“I can tell you whatever Rochelle can,” Tanya said.

But would she be truthful with him? “You’ll tell me why she thinks you’re just using Stephen to get your inheritance?”

Nikki nudged his arm. “Easy. She’s not a suspect.”

Maybe she should have been. As he’d already noted, she wasn’t nearly as upset as a madly in love bride should have been when her groom mysteriously and apparently violently disappeared. When Cooper had quietly, so she wouldn’t overhear him, questioned her reaction earlier, his mother and brother had insisted she was in shock.

But her green eyes were clear now and direct as she replied, “I’m not using Stephen.”

“What about the inheritance? Your grandfather died a decade ago—don’t you already have your money?” But if she did, why pick his mom’s place for her wedding? The chapel was small and the reception hall in the basement was hardly elegant enough for a billionaire bride.

She shook her head.

“Not yet,” another voice chimed in to answer for her. A burly gray-haired man joined them inside the church. With his muscular build and military haircut, he looked more like a cop, but Cooper recognized the lawyer, Arthur Gregory, who’d made countless house calls to the mausoleum. “Neither she nor Rochelle will inherit until they marry.”

If Rochelle was right and her sister was just after her inheritance, wouldn’t she have gotten married ten years ago? Wouldn’t Rochelle have?

“He’s trying to control us even after his death,” Rochelle murmured. “Mean son of a—”

“Miss Chesterfield,” the lawyer admonished her. “Your grandfather had only your best interests at heart.”

“He had no heart,” Rochelle retorted. “The only reason he wanted us married was because he didn’t think a female had enough brains to handle the kind of money he was leaving to us.” She uttered a derisive snort. “Like our father did such a great job. He blew through all that money Grandfather gave him to divorce Mom and take off.”

Cooper had never known what had happened to Tanya’s father. She had always avoided talking about him. He’d been sensitive to that since he’d never wanted to talk about how he had lost his dad either.

“Mr. Gregory, is there a way around the will?” Tanya asked the lawyer.

Her sister gasped. “We don’t even know what’s happened to Stephen and all you care about is the money?”

“I care about him,” Tanya said. “That’s why I need the money. In case this is a kidnapping, I’ll need it to pay the ransom to get him back.”

Arthur Gregory sighed. “There is no way to inherit that money unless you’re married, Miss Chesterfield. And as you know, you only have a few more days...”

Tanya flinched as if the lawyer had slapped her, too.

“Why only a few more days?” Cooper asked.

“If she doesn’t marry before she turns thirty, she forfeits her half of the inheritance,” Rochelle replied. “Then I’ll get it all when I marry.”