Bridal Jeopardy
Rebecca York
There he was, in the corner of the room, his gaze fixed on her again.
In that instant, the other people in the room seemed to vanish. Or maybe they had turned into shadows, because the man in the corner was the only distinct thing she could see. She fought for breath—fought for sanity, if she was honest about it.
She thought of crossing the room and … touching him. That idea leaped into her mind, and she wondered where it had come from. Touch a stranger? Why?
Yet the compulsion was so strong that she started toward him.
She knew that at any moment he would come striding toward her. He would reach out and put his hand on her arm, and then what?
Everything would change.
Bridal
Jeopardy
Rebecca York
(RUTH GLICK WRITING AS REBECCA YORK)
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as REBECCA YORK, is the author of more than one hundred books, including her popular 43 Light Street series for the Mills & Boon
Intrigue line. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, she’s also an author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.
Norman, who’s always there for me
Contents
Prologue (#u0b18b03e-0176-5e0c-a016-f7e9f57adb38)
Chapter One (#ud68e6252-74d0-5be6-9462-e24c1c658712)
Chapter Two (#uf2244852-c565-58c5-acda-4e39715a15c3)
Chapter Three (#u42634d0f-2123-5bda-bbaf-44724411bcbe)
Chapter Four (#u2755236e-ad70-568c-836d-5d84291d5034)
Chapter Five (#ueb706ff4-55f5-5d4d-b484-391c52497d11)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
The horror of that day had replayed over and over in Craig Branson’s mind. What if he, Mom, Dad and Sam had gone to a different restaurant? What if they’d stayed home and ordered in? Life as he knew it would have continued on the same happy track.
But Dad had just brought in a big ad buy at the local TV station where he was promotions manager, and he’d been in the mood to celebrate his hard work.
“Where should we go to dinner?” he’d asked his twin sons, two dark-haired, dark-eyed boys only a few people could tell apart.
Craig and Sam were identical twins, born when a single egg had split in their mother’s womb. Twins were supposed to be close, but there was more between these two eight-year-olds than anyone else knew. There was a hidden bond and a fierce love born of the connection they could never explain to anyone else.
They’d looked at each other and begun a silent conversation about the merits of various choices.
Then Sam had spoken for the two of them. He’d asked to go to Venario’s, an Italian restaurant. If they ate at Venario’s, they could order an extra pizza and have it for breakfast the next morning.
Mom had protested that pizza was no kind of breakfast, but Dad let the boys have their way. If it made his twins happy to bring home pizza, he was all for it, as long as they had a nice portion of chicken or veal for dinner.
That evening they’d sat across from each other at the square table topped by a snowy cloth, silently debating the merits of ground beef or ham on their take-home pizza. Almost as soon as they’d come home from the hospital, they’d been able to read each other’s thoughts, a skill they instinctively kept hidden from the world. Mom suspected, but she had never asked them about it because the idea was too outlandish for her to wrap her brain around. She was a down-to-earth woman who wanted her sons to be strong and independent, even when their inclination was to present a united front.
At the next table, a group of men was talking loudly; their voices annoyed Mom and Dad, but they didn’t interfere with the Branson boys’ happy conversation.
That was another what-if that had tortured Craig for the twenty-two years since that night when his whole world had been shattered.
What if he and Sam hadn’t been so focused on each other? What if they’d been paying more attention to their surroundings?
Could Craig have saved Sam’s life?
He didn’t know because it all had happened so fast.
The door burst open, and two men had charged into the restaurant with guns drawn, already shooting as they ran. The guys at the next table hardly had time to react. One of them tried to stand and went down in a hail of bullets. Another one collapsed in his chair. And the third fell to the side, hitting Mom as she screamed in horror.
People all over the confined space were crying out and hitting the floor. But the chaos around Craig had hardly registered. His total attention was focused on Sam, who had been sitting closer to the scene of disaster.
He’d made a strangled sound and had fallen forward, his head hitting the table as blood spread across the crisp white cloth. His chest had been a mass of pain that Craig felt as though it were his own body on fire.
He’d leaped out of his seat, charging around the table to his brother’s side, slipping from his father’s grasp as he reached for Sam, struggling to maintain the fading connection between them. Panic rose inside him, and he’d clutched at his brother with his hand and with his mind.
Sam, don’t leave me.
Craig?
Sam. I can’t hear you, Sam.
I...can’t...
Those were his last memories of his brother. He had started screaming then, his cries drowning out the sound of a siren approaching.
His father’s arms had folded him close, protecting him from harm. But the harm was already done.
Sam was gone, vanished as though he had never been—leaving an aching gap in Craig’s soul.
Despair and anger raged inside the boy who lived. But even at the age of eight, Craig knew that he would find out who had killed his brother and avenge his death.
Chapter One
The light from the computer screen gave a harsh cast to Craig Branson’s angular features, yet he couldn’t conceal the feeling of elation surging inside himself.
He’d only been eight when his twin brother had been cruelly ripped away from him, but on that terrible day, he’d vowed that he would find the killers and bring them to justice. Now, finally, he had a lead on one of the shooters in a gangland assassination twenty-two years ago.
The restaurant where crime boss Jackie Montana and two of his men had been gunned down had been full of witnesses. Many of the patrons had identified the killers from their mug shots. They were two hired hit men named Joe Lipton and Arthur Polaski who had taken jobs all over the U.S.
Although the cops knew the assassins’ names, the men fled the scene and disappeared from the face of the earth. Now Craig knew why.
Unable to sit still, he stood and strode out of his office, then paced into the hall of the brick ranch house where he’d lived in Bethesda, Maryland, for the past few years.
It was in an upscale neighborhood just outside the nation’s capital, the perfect place for the career he’d started planning even before Sam’s funeral. He would make sure he was tough enough, smart enough and well trained enough to find his brother’s killers. To that end he’d graduated from college at George Washington University, then enlisted in the army and gone to officer-candidate school right after basic training. From there he got his first choice of assignments, the military intelligence service. After learning everything he could about investigative techniques, he returned to civilian life and started his own detective agency.
When his dad died nine months after Mom, he inherited all the money he’d ever need—if you considered his unassuming lifestyle. He had no family. No wife and children, because he knew he was lacking something that most people took for granted—the ability to connect with others on a deep, personal level. He craved those things with a fierce sense of loss because he’d had them with Sam. When his brother had been ripped from him, his anchor to the human race had been severed.
Although that was a pretty dramatic way to put it, he understood the concept perfectly. Other people formed close friendships and loving relationships. He’d never been able to manage either, although he thought he faked it pretty well. He had friends. He’d had physically satisfying affairs with women, but he had always known that marrying one of them would mean cheating her out of the warmth and closeness she deserved.
Failing that, he’d focused on his work, partly because it was intensely rewarding to put bad guys away and partly because it was a means to an end.
He would find who had killed his brother, and he would make sure they would pay for what they had done.
He’d traveled around the U.S., and he maintained contacts with police departments all over the country. One of those contacts had just paid off big-time.
He walked back to his desk, activated the printer and made a copy of the report that had come in from a lieutenant named Ike Broussard in the New Orleans P.D. According to the detective, the body of one of the men who had shot up that restaurant, Arthur Polaski, had just turned up dead on private property outside the city. The local police had identified him by dental records, and the murder weapon was with him.
A very neat package. Maybe too neat.
Craig skimmed the report again. Polaski was beyond his reach, but that didn’t mean there would be no justice for Sam. The hit man hadn’t been operating on his own. Every indication was that he’d been working for a local New Orleans bigwig named John Reynard.
As a boy, Craig had focused on bringing Polaski and Lipton to justice. But as he’d matured, he’d come to understand that the shooters were just hired thugs working for someone who wanted a rival crime boss dead. Now Polaski had led Craig to John Reynard.
Craig worked into the evening, collecting information on his quarry. Finally, when he saw that it was almost ten, he got up and stretched, then fixed himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich, which he took back to the computer, along with a bottle of beer. One advantage of living alone was that he didn’t have to stick to regular meal times, eat at the table or stop work while he fueled up. Once he knew about Reynard, it was easy to find a boatload of information on the man. He was in his early sixties and owned an import-export business in New Orleans, probably a front for drug smuggling. But the cops apparently didn’t look into his company too carefully, undoubtedly because Reynard was very generous with his bribes and also contributed significant amounts to local charities. Public record presented him as an upstanding citizen, although it was interesting that two of his former wives had died while married to him.
Craig took a swallow of beer as he came to an intriguing piece of information. Reynard was about to tie the knot again. In the society pages of the Times-Picayune, there were pictures of him with his bride-to-be at several charity events. She was a very lovely blonde woman named Stephanie Swift who looked to be half the age of the man she was going to marry.
Craig shook his head. He could see why Reynard was attracted to the woman. But what did she see in him?
As Craig studied her wide-set eyes, her narrow nose, her nicely shaped lips and the blond hair that fell in waves to her shoulders, he felt an unexpected jolt of awareness. Something about her drew him, and he struggled to dismiss the feeling of attraction to her. He didn’t want to like her. What kind of a woman would marry a lowlife like Reynard? Could it be that she was too stupid or unaware to understand what kind of man her fiancé was? Or maybe she was attracted to his money, and she didn’t care what the man was really like.
He made a snorting sound, then warned himself to stay objective. That usually wasn’t a problem for him, but apparently it was with Ms. Swift, and letting himself feel anything for her would be a big mistake.
With another shake of his head, he clicked away from a smiling picture of her with Reynard and went back to her dossier. Apparently she came from a family that had been prominent in the city. But the Swifts must have fallen on hard times because now she spent her days in the dress shop that she owned in the French Quarter.
Well, she’d be able to give up that business and get back to her society lifestyle once she married Reynard.
But maybe in the meantime she’d be useful to Craig. What if he got to know her before he made a move on Reynard? Yes, that might be the way to go.
* * *
THE BELL OVER the shop door jingled, and Stephanie Swift looked up. It was a delivery man, carrying a long cardboard box. When she saw the logo on the package, she stiffened, but she kept her voice pleasant as she spoke to the deliveryman.
“Thanks so much.”
He nodded to her as he set the package down on the counter and left her Royal Street shop.
Before the bell stopped jingling again, her assistant, Claire Dupree, came out of the back room, where she’d been unpacking merchandise that had arrived from New York that morning. Claire was a pretty, dark-haired young woman who wanted to get into fashion, and she’d offered to work for Stephanie at minimum wage for the chance to learn the business. She was a quick study, and Stephanie had come to rely on her.
“You’ve been expecting your wedding dress. Is that it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Claire eyed the box. “I’m dying to see it.”
“We’ll open it in the back room,” Stephanie answered, struggling to sound enthusiastic. She’d known all along that John Reynard was the wrong man for her. Or she’d known that perhaps there was no right man, given the way she failed to connect with anyone on a truly intimate level. But she’d held out hope for...something more.
Then fate had overtaken her hopes.
Still, she wasn’t going to let on to her assistant that she had doubts about her upcoming wedding. She was too private a person to talk about her secret worries. And she couldn’t shake the nagging impression that it might be dangerous to reveal her state of mind to anyone. Besides, even if she weren’t marrying John Reynard out of love, maybe it would turn out okay.
That was what she told herself, even when she feared she was heading for disaster. Too bad she was stuck with the bargain she’d made.
“Should I open the box?” Claire called from the next room.
“I’ll be right there,” she answered, then took a couple of deep breaths as she looked around the shop that had been the major focus of her life for the past two years. It was feminine and nicely decorated, a showplace where women could relax while they browsed the dresses and evening outfits that Stephanie imported from designers on the East Coast and Europe.
She’d always dressed well and loved fashion, but her interest morphed from an avocation into a business when her father had given her the bad news about his gambling debts.
She’d wanted to scream at him, but she hadn’t bothered raging about his lack of regard for anyone but himself. The criticism would just roll off his back like rain off a yellow slicker.
Instead, she’d taken her sense of style and the money that her mother had left her and bought a small shop in the French Quarter, a shop that had done well until a downturn in the city’s business cycle had put her in jeopardy.
She stepped into the back room and found Claire talking on her cell phone. When she saw Stephanie, she clicked off at once.
“Sorry. I was just checking in with Mom.”
“Sure,” Stephanie answered, distracted. She knew that Claire’s mother was living in a nursing home and that her daughter spoke to her frequently.
Taking a pair of scissors, she began to carefully open the dress box. The top came off, revealing layers of tissue paper. Beneath them was an ivory-colored sleeveless gown decorated with seed pearls and delicate lace. She’d seen it at a wedding outlet in New York and had used her professional capacity to order it at the wholesale price.
“Beautiful,” Claire breathed as she touched the delicate silk fabric.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you try it on? I can help you with the buttons up the back.”
“Not now.”
Stephanie slipped the dress onto a hanger, then turned away to put it on the rack in back of her, where it dangled like a headless hanging victim.
She winced, wishing she hadn’t thought of that image.
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing she wished. What if she’d never met John Reynard? What if her shop hadn’t taken that downturn? What if she met a man who could connect with her in ways that she could only imagine?
She made a disgusted sound. As if that was going to happen.
“What?” Claire asked.
“Nothing. I’m not really feeling well. Do you mind if I get out of here for a few hours?”
Claire gave her a sympathetic look. “Oh, no. You’ve got that reception with John this evening.”
Stephanie felt a wave of anxiety sweep over her. She’d put the reception out of her mind, but now she knew what had been making her feel unsettled—even before the dress had arrived. “Lord, I forgot all about that.”
“You’d better go home and rest. You don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Right.” Once again, she wished that she’d never met John Reynard. Wished that he hadn’t listened to her dad’s sob story, then stepped in to pay her debts—and Dad’s. But she’d taken his money because her father had begged her to let John Reynard handle their problems. And at the time, it had seemed the only way out. She’d been willing to let her shop go under. She could always find a job with someone else, but that wouldn’t work out so well for Dad. He’d lose the house—his last tie to the luxurious past that the family had enjoyed. And she’d known deep down that would kill him.
If she were the cause of that, her guilt would be too great for her to bear. Which was the irony of this situation. She’d never really felt close to her parents, yet she was compelled to make sure her father ended his days in the manner to which he was accustomed. Probably because she’d never felt like a dutiful daughter—and Dad had made sure she understood that.
Claire’s voice broke into her troubled thoughts.
“Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.” She thought for a moment. “If Mrs. Arlington calls to ask about her ball gown, tell her it hasn’t come in yet.”
“Of course. Don’t trouble yourself about it,” Claire repeated.
Stephanie nodded, wishing she could really relax and stop worrying about her future.
Chapter Two
After three days in New Orleans, Craig was getting a feel for the city and the power base that ran it. The Big Easy was so different from any other American urban area that it might as well have been in a foreign country. The atmosphere was hot and sultry. The houses were painted bright colors. The landscape was almost tropical, and the people exuded a laid-back attitude that belied the hard times that Hurricane Katrina had caused.
He’d avoided his contact with the police department because he was in the city under an assumed name—Craig Brady. Unlike Craig Branson, Brady had inherited considerable wealth and lived off his investments. The persona was one he’d established several years ago when he’d been hired to take down a finance guy who was using a Ponzi scheme to line his own pockets. Craig had posed as an investor ripe for the picking and nailed the guy.
The Brady persona made a good cover for investigating John Reynard. But so far Craig had stayed away from the man. He wanted to establish himself as being in the city for profit and fun. To that end he’d gone prowling around, sampling the food, the jazz and the strip clubs along Bourbon Street.
He’d also found a high-stakes poker game at a private gentleman’s club, where he could pick up some money and also some information. The minimum bet was fifty dollars, but that had been of little risk to Craig. He might not be good at intimate relationships, but he was excellent at reading people, and he used that skill to win a couple of sizable pots.
Then he’d allowed himself to lose half of it back, which put the men around the table in a friendlier mood than when he’d been raking in the chips.
“So where do you meet high-class women?” he’d asked as he and his new friends helped themselves to the club’s bourbon.
“The United Hospital Fund is holding a charity event at Oak Lane Plantation, out along the river.”
“Sounds interesting,” he answered
“Tickets are a thousand clams a pop.”
“Well, it’s for a good cause,” Craig allowed. “And you’re saying that some of the ladies are single?”
“The young gals looking for husbands come out in droves.”
He’d found out where to buy a ticket and purchased one, pretty sure from his research that John Reynard would be there.
After buying the ticket, he’d gone to one of the rental shops in town and gotten a tuxedo. Not his usual attire, he thought as he stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his bow tie. But he guessed he’d do.
His hand shook for a moment, and he pressed his palm against his thigh, annoyed at his unusual reaction. It came from being so close to Sam’s killer, he told himself, but he wasn’t entirely sure he believed it.
He couldn’t contain the mixture of anticipation and nerves racing through him. He’d been waiting a long time to confront the man who had been responsible for his brother’s death, and now the meeting was almost here.
Well, confrontation wasn’t exactly the right word. He was going to have a look at John Reynard and start planning his attack on the man. After all these years, there was no rush. Reynard wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was his beautiful fiancée. As Craig thought of Stephanie Swift, anticipation tightened his gut.
Stephanie Swift was not the main event, but she could be a means to an end, he told himself.
Craig walked to the parking lot and picked up his rental car, then headed out of town to Oak Lane Plantation.
The mansion house was ablaze with lights when he arrived, and he found a space among the Cadillacs, BMWs and Mercedes that dominated the parking area.
Inside he accepted a flute of champagne from a waiter hovering near the door because he didn’t want to look out of place among the men and women enjoying themselves at this upscale gathering.
The mansion, which was often rented out for private functions, was lavishly furnished with period tables and chests interspersed with more modern chairs and sofas and Oriental rugs on the polished pine floorboards.
He wandered from the front hall to the other rooms on the main floor, watching the guests talking, drinking and eating. As promised, some of the ladies were young, and many gave him speculative looks, although he didn’t stop to talk to any of them.
But he had his story ready if needed.
He was from out of town and considering settling in the city, and he thought this gathering would be an excellent introduction to the local social life. He’d act as if he was looking for new investments—and open to suggestions from the New Orleans financial elite.
He made his way slowly through the crowd and finally spotted John Reynard on the veranda. He was talking with a group of men and women who all seemed to know one another. And Stephanie Swift was at his side.
Craig had been taken with her picture. He hadn’t been prepared for the reality of the woman. His breath caught as he looked at her from the doorway leading outside. She was stunning in an emerald-green gown that perfectly set off her blond beauty.
She must have known he was staring at her because she looked up, and he would have sworn she had the same reaction to him that he was having to her. Her breath hitched, and she went absolutely still.
Apparently Reynard sensed something. Bending close to her, he spoke in a low voice. From twenty feet away, Craig couldn’t catch the words, but he understood the proprietary way the man spoke. This woman was his property.
She must have said something reassuring, because Reynard went back to his previous conversation. But the moment had been telling. From Stephanie’s reaction, Craig knew that she understood her place in her fiancé’s world.
He lingered in the doorway and took a small sip of his champagne, thinking that he’d like to approach the couple, but he wasn’t going to press his luck. After a long moment, he turned away and went in search of the buffet table. He’d paid a lot of money to enjoy this reception, and he might as well get a decent meal out of it.
* * *
STEPHANIE WATCHED the broad shoulders of the man who had been staring at John—and her. She’d noticed him right away, noticed how his tuxedo accentuated his rugged good looks. She knew she had never seen him before. Who was he, and what was he doing here? For a moment he’d looked interested in John, then he’d switched his attention to her, and she’d felt as if there was an invisible wire connecting the two of them, drawing them to each other.
She hoped John hadn’t caught the intensity of her interest in the man because she knew he was jealous of any interactions she had with other guys. John had staked his claim on her, and she fully understood that playing any role but the one she’d been assigned was dangerous. Before she’d agreed to the marriage, her suitor had done his best to charm her, and she’d tried to convince herself that marriage to him wouldn’t be so bad. But once he’d known she was his, there had been subtle changes. He didn’t outright say that he owned her, but she got that message.
“Excuse me for a moment,” she murmured.
“Where are you going?” her companion asked.
“To powder my nose.”
He nodded, and she moved back through the mansion toward the grand staircase. The ladies’ room was on the second floor, and she was glad to escape from John and the society types who populated the party.
As she walked through the main floor, she scanned the crowd and was relieved and disappointed not to see the mysterious stranger. He couldn’t have just come in for a few minutes and left. Not at the price he’d paid for the ticket to this event.
Then she felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and she turned quickly. There he was, in the corner, his gaze fixed on her again.
In that instant, the other people in the room seemed to vanish. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that they had turned into shadows, because the man in the corner was the only distinct thing she could see. She fought for breath, fought for sanity if she was honest about it.
What are you doing to me? she asked, the question never leaving her lips because she spoke only in her mind. Still, she had the weird feeling that he could hear her, although he gave her no answer.
She thought of crossing the room and...touching him. That idea leaped into her mind, and she wondered where it had come from. Touch a stranger? Why?
Yet the compulsion was so strong that she started toward him. Then she stopped after two steps and clenched her fists.
He was standing with the same rigidity, and she knew that at any moment he would come striding toward her. He would reach out and put his hand on her arm, and then what?
Everything would change.
She didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t want to find out. No, that was a lie. She couldn’t afford the luxury of finding out.
The temptation was so overwhelming that she had to force herself to turn away and hurry up the stairs. With a sigh of relief, she closed the ladies’ room door behind her, putting a barrier between herself and the man who had drawn her like no other.
Marge LaFort glanced up from where she sat at one of the dressing-table stools. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she lied.
“You look like...”
“Like what?” she demanded as the other woman’s voice trailed off.
Marge shrugged. “I’m not sure. Is that handsome fiancé of yours giving you a hard time?”
“No. Of course not,” Stephanie denied. In fact, she had forgotten all about John Reynard when she’d been caught in the stranger’s web. Or was he caught in hers? She didn’t know which.
She walked through the dressing area and into the bathroom, where she used the facilities, not because she needed to but because it would seem strange to simply come here and take refuge.
To her relief, when she emerged, Marge was gone. Or was that good? What if Marge went straight down to talk to John?
Stephanie dragged in a breath and let it out, wishing that she didn’t imagine every person in the mansion as a spy for John Reynard, yet she knew that he did have a network of informants—or at least people who were anxious to stay on the good side of such a powerful man by feeding him information about people and events he might think important.
For example, she knew there were some new customers who had come to her shop to check out John Reynard’s fiancée. And some of them were probably reporting back to him, much as she hated to think it. But she supposed she’d have to live with that, and maybe he’d trust her more when they were married.
She stayed at the dressing table for several more minutes, fussing with her hair, wondering whom she was hiding from—the dark-haired man or her intended. When she finally emerged and came downstairs, she didn’t see the stranger. That was a relief. Now she only had to deal with John.
* * *
MEN WERE WATCHING HIM, Craig realized as he filled a plate with boudin balls, Cajun rice and crawfish étouffée. Tough-looking types who didn’t exactly fit in with the other guests at this fancy event. Since they were dividing their attention between Reynard and Craig, he had to assume that they were the other man’s bodyguards. Apparently Craig had caught Reynard’s attention. Or perhaps Reynard had noticed the silent exchange when Craig and Stephanie had made eye contact. At any event, he decided it would be best to leave.
After taking a few bites, he put down his plate on one of the trays set around the room for dirty dishes and made his way out of the house and into the parking area, half-expecting somebody to try to jump him. But apparently his leaving had the desired effect. He drove away and back to his upscale New Orleans B and B without incident.
But what was his next move?
He’d focused his research on John Reynard. Now he was going to find out everything he could about Stephanie Swift. He told himself he was doing his job. He told himself that digging into the woman’s life would be the key to taking down Reynard, but he wasn’t sure he was being honest about his motives. If he admitted he was obsessed with her, that would be more like the truth.
The feeling was a novelty for Craig. He’d enjoyed the company of women. He’d learned the art of pleasing them in bed. But none of them had drawn his interest the way Stephanie Swift had.
He had looked up details about her on the web, but that was too impersonal an approach. Switching his tactics, he decided to get a firsthand picture of her life.
The morning after the charity reception, he waited in his car outside her apartment on Decatur Street and discreetly followed her Honda sedan to a sprawling mansion in the Garden District. It was her father’s house, he knew, and he drove around the corner and waited until she emerged about a half hour after she’d entered, a frown on her pretty features. Apparently her meeting with Dad hadn’t gone so well.
Her next stop was her shop on Royal. When she went in, he walked past and took up a discreet position around the corner.
He thought of himself as good at surveillance, but he wondered if she knew he was following her. Not because a normal person would have caught on, but because there was something between them that he couldn’t explain. He’d been prepared to dislike her. Instead, he’d been drawn to her when they’d seen each other at that charity reception, and she’d been as aware of him as he was of her.
That knowledge set up an unaccustomed buzzing inside him. He hadn’t felt this way since...
Well, since he and Sam had played hide-and-seek. Only back then it had been a different kind of game. Most kids hid and hoped that the other person couldn’t figure out where they had gone. With him and Sam, there was an extra element. One of them would hide, then try to break the connection between them—try to be as quiet as possible in his mind so that his brother would have no idea where he was.
Sam had been better at it than Craig, who hadn’t been able to turn off his thoughts, and Sam had always found him. But why was he thinking of that now?
* * *
TWO DAYS AFTER the charity reception, Stephanie was still feeling unsettled as she went through the rack of clothing on the left side of the shop, buttoning blouses, straightening straps and generally making the merchandise look tidy. She struggled to stay calm, but her heart was pounding. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to happen, and every so often, she glanced toward the window, wondering if she was going to see the dark-haired man with the broad shoulders who had stared at her in the plantation house. Well, it hadn’t been just him. She’d stared back because there had been something about him that had compelled her interest. It wasn’t simply the way his formal attire had set off his dark good looks. She’d felt a pull toward him that she couldn’t explain, even to herself. A pull that excited her and made her nerves jump at the same time.
The bell over the door jingled, and she went rigid. As she turned, she thought she would see the man from the reception. Instead, two rough-looking guys came striding in as though they owned the place.
Both of them were wearing light-colored business suits that seemed out of place on anyone so tough-looking. One was short and completely bald—or he’d shaved off any remaining hair on his head. He was trying for a Yul Brynner effect, although his face was too ugly for a movie star—unless he was playing a Mafia heavy. The other guy was a couple of inches taller, with a wide mouth, bushy eyebrows and thick, wavy hair.
They both had big hands and beady, assessing eyes. Or perhaps the better word was hungry.
Neither one of them would inspire confidence in a dark alley at night. But here they were in her shop, and she was pretty sure that neither one of them had come to buy a dress for his girlfriend.
“Nice place you have here,” the taller one said.
As they stood looking her over, her mouth turned so dry that she could barely speak, but she managed to say, “Can I help you?”
The spokesman answered. “That depends, sweetheart.”
“On what?”
“On what you have to offer.”
“Nothing,” she heard herself say.
“We’ll see.”
She took a step back, wishing that Claire wasn’t out on her lunch break. But what good would Claire do against these guys?
Maybe call 911 from the back room, if she’d been here.
But Stephanie was on her own, and she was sure that they already knew it. Wishing the counter were between her and the men, she took a step to the side. One of them kept pace with her while the other one stood by the door. She saw him turn, and she had the awful feeling that he was planning to lock the three of them in there.
Chapter Three
Before the thug could accomplish his purpose, the door burst open, and another man charged into the shop. She had a split second to see who it was. The darkly handsome stranger from the charity reception. The other night, he’d been in a tuxedo. Today he had on jeans and a dark T-shirt.
The man in the doorway reacted to the interruption by reaching into his coat, perhaps for a gun, but he never connected with whatever he was going to pull out. The stranger cracked him in the jaw with a large fist, then pushed him backward into the other man. They both went down in a tangle of arms and legs, pulling some of the clothing from the rack with them, but it wasn’t going to be that easy to get rid of them.
The one on the bottom threw his partner to the side and pulled an automatic from his pocket. Stephanie reacted instinctively. She kicked out with her high-heeled shoe, catching the guy in his gun hand, making him howl in pain. She followed the kick by stamping down on the back of his hand, drawing a scream and sending the gun flying.
The bald one had scrambled up and launched himself at the stranger, who was prepared for the move. He stepped aside, letting baldy crash into the glass of the door. He made a strangled sound as he bounced back, then reached for the knob and flung the door open. He was outside and running down the block before Stephanie realized that the other man was on his feet and trying to get away as the rescuer made a grab for him. But the thug had the strength of desperation. He pushed the stranger against the wall, then leaped around him, charging out the door, following his partner down the block.
The man who had come to Stephanie’s rescue pushed himself upright, determination in his eyes, and she was afraid he was going after the two men. She grabbed his hand to stop him, and everything changed.
In that moment of contact, the breath whooshed from her lungs, and she stood staring at him—as she had stared when they’d been standing across the room from each other at the plantation house. Only this was different. Last time there had been twenty feet of space between them. Now her hand gripped his, and somehow the physical connection had opened a gateway between them.
Images flooded into her mind. She saw a long-ago scene. Two little boys in a restaurant. She knew one of them was...Craig. His name was Craig. And the other one was Sam. And their minds were open to each other the way his mind was open to her at this moment.
The other boy was his mirror image. He must be his twin brother. There was a completeness to the two of them, a bond that made her sharply aware of all the unfulfilled longings that permeated her life.
She was just sinking into the long-ago scene when the door of the restaurant where the boys were sitting flew open, and gunmen charged in—like the men who had charged into her shop. Only these guys had assault rifles, and they started shooting.
She felt the seconds of fear. She felt the pain as Sam was hit. She felt Craig’s utter desolation as his brother slipped away from him.
Gasping, she tried to pull back, but his hold only tightened on her, and she knew he was pulling memories from her mind as she was from his.
More recent memories. The talk with her father where he’d told her that he couldn’t pay off his gambling debts. And then the look in his eyes when he explained that there was a solution to all their problems. A rich man was interested in marrying her. A rich man who would take care of their debts and take care of her for the rest of her life.
“He spoke to you first?” she asked her father.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He thought that was more appropriate.”
Was that the real reason, or had he known that he had an advantage with the father that he didn’t have with the daughter?
She found out her suitor was John Reynard, a man she had met at the country club out by Lake Pontchartrain, where she’d gone for a friend’s birthday celebration. He was another guest at the party, and he’d sat at her table and talked to her. They’d danced, and she’d known he was interested in her. He’d asked her out several times, and she’d accepted because she saw no harm in it. But the idea of his wanting to marry her came as a shock.
“I’m not ready for marriage,” she blurted.
“You’re going to have to change your mind about that.”
“No.”
“I’m in financial trouble.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“You could say it’s my own fault, but I’m not going to go down in disgrace if someone is willing to help me. Besides, John Reynard will make a good husband. He’s rich and well connected. You’ll never want for anything.”
She felt as though she were living in the Middle Ages. Women in the twenty-first century married for love, not for the right connections.
Yet she’d long ago secretly given up on love, and maybe that was why she had finally agreed.
She didn’t want to be revealing any of that to Craig Branson. Or was it Craig Brady? She couldn’t be sure, because both names came to her strongly.
But the exchange of information was only part of what was happening between them. She felt his emotions. The emptiness that had consumed him since his brother’s death. It was like the emptiness she had always felt, only she’d had nothing to compare it to.
And below the mental connection was a sexual pull that she had never experienced before in her life.
It was as though she must make love with this man—or die. Or perhaps she would die if she made love with him.
That thought was so outrageous that she pushed it from her thoughts. Which wasn’t difficult, because sexual desire was limiting her ability to think.
Craig Branson or Brady pulled her into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers.
She wanted to push him away. No, that was a lie. She wanted him to show her the pleasure of making love—pleasure that she knew would never be hers with John Reynard.
She tried to drive that last thought from her mind as his lips moved over hers, hungry and insistent. It was too private to share with anyone, least of all the man who held her in his arms. But she knew he had picked it up and knew he was glad she understood what a mistake it would be to marry Reynard. Not just because...
Branson cut the thought off before it could fully form. She was sure that he and Reynard had never met each other before the night of the charity reception, yet he seemed to know a lot about her fiancé.
She tried to hang on to that observation, but her mind was no longer operating in any rational manner.
Feelings had become more important than thoughts. The feel of Craig Branson’s lips against hers. The feel of his hands as they stroked up and down her back, then cupped her bottom, pulling her more tightly against the erection straining at the front of his jeans.
He was ready to make love with her. And she was just as ready, yet she knew in some part of her mind that this was going too fast. They had to stop, and she was the one who had to do it.
She wrenched her mouth away from his and pushed at his shoulders.
The move caught him by surprise, because in his mind he was already taking the heated contact to its logical conclusion.
She slipped out of his grasp and put several feet of space between them as she stood panting.
When he reached for her, she shook her head. “Not now.”
He was breathing hard, and his face looked as if he’d just touched a live electric wire, but he said only, “Why not?”
Now she couldn’t meet his heated gaze. “Is this usually the way you act with a woman you don’t know?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“What happened between us just now?”
“I felt the connection to you. Like the connection to Sam.” He laughed. “Well, I never felt the sexual part with my brother.”
She nodded slowly.
“But you’ve never felt anything like that?” he asked.
“No. What does it mean?”
“You weren’t a twin?”
“No.”
“Then what in the hell just happened?” he asked, revealing he was as perplexed as she was.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
It seemed he was still trying to come to a logical conclusion when she was sure there was no logic to what had happened. Or, at least, no logic that she had ever encountered.
“I...”
Before she could explain that to him, the bell over the shop door jingled, and her head jerked up. Claire stepped into the shop and gave the two of them an appraising look.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice going high and sharp.
“Two men came in here. I don’t know what they wanted, except that they were going to hurt me. Then Mr....”
“Brady,” he supplied, and she knew when he said it that it wasn’t his real name. But for some reason he had decided to use it.
“Mr. Brady came in and fought with them. Then they ran away.”
Claire’s gaze swung to him, her eyes assessing. “That was lucky—your being here. But how did you know what was happening?”
“I was on my way to the po’boy shop down the block,” the man who had rescued her said. “I noticed them on the street, and they looked out of place. When I saw them come in here, I didn’t think they were planning to buy dresses.”
Claire was still staring at Stephanie and Craig as though she didn’t believe a word of what they were saying. And Stephanie silently acknowledged that they were lying—by implication, at least, about what had happened after the men had left.
Craig turned away and came down on his knees under the rack of dresses. When he stood again, he was holding a gun. “They left this,” he said to Claire.
She sucked in a sharp breath as she saw the weapon. If Claire hadn’t believed them in the first place, she would now.
“What should I do with it?” Stephanie asked.
“I’ll take it,” Craig said.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Do you want to?”
She thought about it before shaking her head, then wondered if he would accept the decision.
As she looked at him, her gaze zeroed in on the bruise that was discoloring his forehead.
“You got hurt in the fight,” she said.
“Did I?”
“Yes. Your forehead is bruised. You need ice on that.”
Glad to escape, she slipped into the back room, where she paused to run a shaky hand through her hair, thanking her lucky stars that she and Craig hadn’t been in each other’s arms when Claire had come in. That was all she needed, for someone to report back to John that she was kissing another man. Would Claire have ratted on her? She didn’t know, but she still understood that she had to be careful.
She got several ice cubes from the refrigerator, wrapped them in a paper towel, then put them into a plastic bag. She wished she didn’t have to go out there and face Craig again, but she was pretty sure he was still waiting for her in the front of the shop.
He and Claire were talking when she returned and handed him the ice pack, being careful not to touch his hand.
Something had happened between them when they touched, and she didn’t want it to happen again. At least not now.
He took the ice and pressed the package against his forehead.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Mr. Brady and I were talking. He’s in the city to get some investment advice,” Claire said.
Stephanie nodded. She hadn’t picked that up from him, but she supposed it could be true. She canceled the last silent observation. He wasn’t in town for investment advice. He was here to investigate John Reynard.
That realization made her suck in a sharp breath.
“Are you all right?” Claire asked, her gaze anxious.
“I’m...I’m just reliving the moments before Mr. Brady came in,” she answered. “It was pretty scary with those men coming after me.”
“What happened, exactly?” Claire asked.
“Not too much. They came in, and I could tell they—” she gulped “—wanted to harm me.”
“Why?” Claire pressed.
“I don’t know,” she answered, flapping her arm in frustration and wondering if it had something to do with her father. What if he’d let his gambling get out of hand again and they were here to make sure he paid up?
Nothing like that had happened to her before. Nobody had come after her because of her father’s debts, but maybe she’d been lucky in the past.
Craig was also staring at her. Afraid he might try to touch her, she took a quick step back.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’d better go.”
She felt relief. She needed some distance from him. But the relief was tinged with disappointment. They had made some kind of weird mental connection, and she couldn’t simply let that go. She wanted to ask if she would see him again, but she couldn’t start a conversation like that in front of Claire. And she already knew the answer, because she understood that she and Craig Brady couldn’t keep away from each other.
She shivered, drawing a reaction from Claire again.
“You should go home and rest.”
“I can’t keep bugging out on you.”
“You’ve just had a pretty bad experience.”
She might have argued except that she wanted to be alone with her thoughts—and her reactions.
* * *
OUTSIDE ON THE STREET, Craig took a deep breath, then looked around, making sure that the two men who had attacked Stephanie weren’t lurking.
Perhaps if the other woman hadn’t come in, Craig would have stayed in the shop. But their privacy had been compromised. Which was lucky, because following through on his impulses would have been dangerous for Stephanie.
He thought about her reaction to his question about calling the cops. A regular, upstanding citizen would have wanted to report the incident, but she’d decided not to do it. Which was good for him, he supposed. If he got dragged into making a police report, he’d have to give his real name.
He wasn’t quite steady on his feet as he walked down the sidewalk, not sure where he was going.
His head was spinning as he tried to take in everything that had happened in the past hour. Starting with the attack and ending with the intimacy of his contact with Stephanie. He was still reeling from that. Probably she was, too, although he knew her reaction wasn’t exactly the same as his.
From the contact with her, he knew that she had never experienced anything like what had happened when they’d touched. She’d been totally unprepared for the way their minds had connected.
To be honest, he hadn’t been prepared, either. But it was different for him. He had known that kind of mind-to-mind contact before—with his brother. He’d mourned Sam’s loss and mourned the loss of that perfect communication. He’d thought he would never experience it again. Then he had—with Stephanie Swift. A woman who was engaged to marry the man who had caused Sam’s death.
He swore under his breath, trying to wrap his mind around all the implications. If she married Reynard, she’d be lost to him. And lost to herself, too, because she’d be committing herself to a man who didn’t understand her and couldn’t give her the intimate contact she needed.
Craig huffed out a breath. And he could?
Yes, of course. He’d proved it when he’d touched her, kissed her. Their minds had opened to each other, but there was an added component he’d never experienced with his brother. He and Sam had been twin brothers, sharing the intimacy of siblings. He and Stephanie were adults—and intimate on a whole new level. Not only could they communicate mind to mind, they were drawn to each other with a sexual pull that was startling in its intensity.
He wanted to make love with her. Desperately. Yet below the surface of that need was a hint of warning. The sexual contact was dangerous if they didn’t handle it right. He wasn’t sure why he realized that truth. He only knew that he wasn’t making it up.
Something else he knew. He couldn’t allow Stephanie Swift to marry John Reynard for a whole lot of reasons. Yet he knew that was another thing he’d have to handle carefully if he didn’t want Stephanie to end up dead.
He winced. That was putting it pretty strongly, but he couldn’t discount that truth. John Reynard would fight for what he thought was his. And if he couldn’t have it, nobody could.
And what about Craig’s original purpose—to avenge his brother’s death? He hadn’t forgotten about that, but he knew he couldn’t simply go blasting into Reynard’s life. All along he’d known he had to be careful about his approach to the man. That was true in spades now.
Chapter Four
“You don’t mind staying here by yourself?” Stephanie asked her assistant again.
“I think I’ll be okay.”
“I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”
Claire gave her a direct look. “The way it sounded, they were after you—not me.”
She answered with a tight nod.
“Go on, then.” Claire looked around. “And maybe you want to take the back way.”
Stephanie hated the idea of sneaking out of her own shop, but she knew that Claire was probably right. She slipped through the back door and stood looking around before heading down the alley and over a few blocks to the house she’d bought. She kept herself from running, but she walked quickly along the afternoon streets. When she stepped inside her living room, she breathed a sigh before locking the door firmly behind her, then looking around at the room she had so lovingly furnished—with some pieces from the Garden District mansion and others that she’d picked up at flea markets and garage sales.
The house itself was old but charming, and she’d gotten it at a very good price after Katrina, from a couple who had decided to leave the city for a safer environment.
The down payment had taken a chunk of the money she’d inherited from her mother. But she hadn’t wanted to live with her father in the Garden District mansion. She’d been happy here—well, as happy as she could be. And now her life had turned itself upside down again.
The first time had been a few months ago, when John Reynard had asked for her hand in marriage, and she’d known she had to accept. Then an hour ago, Craig Branson had touched her, and the world had flipped over again.
Her mind had opened to Craig’s. And his to hers. He’d tried to hide it from her, but she knew he had come to New Orleans because he thought John Reynard had something to do with the death of his twin brother. That was why he’d been at the charity reception the other night. He’d been stalking Reynard—and he’d locked eyes with her.
She thought about that and about what else she’d discovered. Since birth and perhaps before, Craig had been tied to his brother, Sam, in a way that he had taken for granted. That connection had been ripped away by a stray bullet, leaving him hardly able to cope with his life. But he had coped. And he’d vowed to avenge his brother’s death.
She shuddered as she thought about the rest of what had been in his mind. He’d never expected to experience that intimacy with anyone again—but he had. With her.
What did it mean? How was it possible?
She was trying to work her way through the encounter with him when a knock on the door made her whole body jerk.
Was that Craig? Coming after her.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“John.”
Oh, Lord, John. The man she was going to marry. One of the last people she wanted to see now.
She got up on shaky legs and crossed to the door. From the front window, she saw John standing on her doorstep, his arms folded tightly across his chest. He dropped them to his sides when he saw her staring at him.
Quickly she unlocked the door and stepped aside. He came in and closed the door behind him, then turned to her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You were attacked.”
“How do you know?”
He hesitated for just a second before saying, “I was calling to say hello, and Claire answered the phone. She sounded upset, so I asked her some questions. Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“She says two men came into the shop and threatened you. Then a stranger came to your rescue.”
“Yes.”
“I assume you got his name.”
“He’s Craig Brady,” she said, using the false name that he’d given to Claire.
“And you never met him before?”
She wondered what the right answer was, then decided and said, “I didn’t meet him, but he was at that charity reception the other night.”
“The guy who was watching you?”
She winced. “I guess. I didn’t really pay much attention,” she lied.
John kept his gaze on her, and she worked to keep her expression neutral. She knew he’d noticed Craig at the plantation house. And done what? Maybe had his guys make a move on him?
“So what about the men who attacked you?” John asked. “Had you ever seen them before?”
“No.”
John continued his interrogation. “And what did they want?”
“I never found out.”
His eyes narrowed. “But I suspect you think it has something to do with your father.”
Her mouth had gone dry, but she managed to answer, “Yes.”
“He’s gambling again?”
“I...don’t know for sure.”
“You’d better tell him to behave himself. I’m not a bottomless well of money.”
“I understand.”
“I hate it that he’s responsible for bad stuff happening to you,” he said, the tone of his voice changing. She knew that change. He was feeling tender toward her, and amorous.
He reached out and took her in his arms, cradling her against himself, and she fought to keep the stiffness out of her body. She didn’t want him to hold her, but she could hardly object to her fiancé comforting her after a frightening experience.
He crooked one hand under her chin and tipped her face up as he lowered his mouth. His lips touched down on hers, settled, then began to move with the skill of a man who had made love to many women.
Stephanie tried to relax and kiss him back, when all she wanted to do was duck out of his arms and flee the room.
He was an experienced lover, and she’d convinced herself that marrying him wouldn’t be a personal disaster for her, yet, as he kissed her, she couldn’t stop herself from comparing her feelings now to the sensations and emotions that had threatened to swamp her when Craig had held her in his arms.
Then she’d been aroused. Hot and pliable and ready for sex. Now she was only tolerating the attentions of the man whose bed she would share in a few months.
She hoped he didn’t realize what she was really feeling. And when he drew back, she felt relief and shame warring inside her. If she were honest, she would tell John Reynard that she couldn’t marry him, but she knew that was as impossible as her flying off to Oz in a hot-air balloon.
At least he hadn’t forced her to make love with him. She’d told him that she couldn’t do that until they were married, and he’d grumbled about the edict. But he’d respected her wishes. She wondered if he thought she was a virgin. Probably not. Probably he’d investigated her background enough to know that she’d been intimate with a few men, but the relationships had never gone very far. Maybe he was thinking that he’d wait until marriage so she didn’t have a chance to walk away when she was disappointed.
He looked down at her. “I guess you’re still upset by what happened.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“I should let you rest.” The edge in his voice made her grasp his arm. “I’m sorry. I just can’t...” She let her voice trail off rather than try to explain any further.
“I’m going to have some of my men protect you,” he said.
Her gaze shot to his face. “What do you mean?”
“They’ll be watching over you.”
“You mean they’re coming here?”
“They won’t bother you, but they’ll be around.”
“Yes, thank you,” she managed to say, when she really wanted to scream at him to leave her alone.
He left the house then, and she collapsed into a chair, glad to be alone. Yet at the same time she was terrified by what had just happened. She’d never wanted to marry this man. Now she understood just how bad a decision it would be.
Would be? Was she still thinking that she had a choice?
* * *
FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS, Craig had been following Stephanie around. Now it was more important than ever for him to keep up the surveillance—not just for himself but for her. But as he rounded the corner at the end of her block, he saw John Reynard leaving her house.
He stopped short, ducking back around the corner, fighting a spurt of jealousy that stabbed through him. That bastard had access to Stephanie, and Craig did not. She was engaged to the man, but she was never going to marry him. Craig would make sure of that. The depth of his emotions shocked him. He hadn’t felt this strongly about anything since Sam’s death. Then he’d been filled with despair. But also determination, he acknowledged.
The determination was just as strong now, along with an excitement that coursed through his veins and made his heart pound.
He had to pry Stephanie away from John Reynard, but he couldn’t exactly pull out a gun and shoot the man. He had to get something on him—something that would stop him in his tracks. Evidence from Sam’s murder? He’d been prepared to play a long game getting that kind of information. But now the time frame had changed. It would be much better if it was something more recent that they could take to the cops.
They? Was he already thinking Stephanie was on his side?
He pulled himself up short. Take it a step at a time, he warned himself. You just met her. You can’t change her world in a couple of hours.
Still, he did feel a small measure of victory. Reynard had come running over to Stephanie’s house after the incident. Probably he’d thought he could comfort her—like in the bedroom. But now he was on his way out the front door. Hopefully because Stephanie hadn’t wanted him there.
How could she, after the connection she and Craig had made in the shop?
John left the house, but before he drove away, he glanced toward two men sitting in a car across the street from her house.
The men who had attacked her in the shop?
What would it mean that Reynard knew they were here?
Craig waited with his heart pounding until Reynard had finished his conversation with Stephanie and driven away. He ached to stride down the block and confront the watchers, but caution made him walk back in the other direction, then take the alley in back of the houses across the street from Stephanie’s. They were typical French Quarter dwellings, many of them built butting up against one another or with enclosed courtyards, but there were passageways between some, and he took one that would bring him almost up to the car where the men were sitting.
He stayed in the shadows, noting that they were both turned toward Stephanie’s house. He recognized them. They weren’t the thugs who had come into her shop. They were the men who had followed him around at the charity reception. John Reynard’s bodyguards. Apparently, after the disturbing incident in the shop, he’d assigned them to watch over his fiancée.
In a way, that was a good move on Reynard’s part. And it argued that Reynard had nothing to do with the attack at the dress shop, but it created a problem for Craig. He needed to get close to her again, and he’d have to make sure the men didn’t spot him. For a couple of reasons—chief of which was that it would put Stephanie at risk.
He cursed under his breath, feeling as if Reynard was beating him in a chess game. Craig was going to have to rethink his strategy.
* * *
STEPHANIE STOOD, too restless to simply sit and do nothing. Instead she went to the window and lifted one of the venetian-blind slats. She spotted the men in the car across the street immediately. As promised, they were keeping watch on her house. But she saw something else, as well. A flicker of movement drew her attention to a passageway between two houses near the bodyguards’ car. A man was standing in the shadows, watching the watchers. For a moment she thought it might be one of the men who had come to the shop. But that was only until she saw his face.
It was Craig Branson. He must have followed her home, and now he was watching the two men in the car.
Were there more of John’s men guarding the rear of her house? She’d have to assume that was true, since she could leave that way and not be spotted from the street.
Feeling like a prisoner in her own home, she gritted her teeth. But maybe that was the way John wanted her to feel. He’d said he’d arranged protection, but knowing him, that probably wasn’t his only reason. He wanted her to understand that if she stepped out of line, he would know it.
She let the slat slip back into place, glad that the men out there couldn’t see through the walls of her house. Crossing to the kitchen, she got out a box of English breakfast tea. After filling a mug with water, she set it in the microwave and pressed the beverage button.
When the water was hot, she added a tea bag and let it steep while she paced back and forth along the length of the kitchen, waiting for the tea to be ready. After removing the tea bag, she carried the mug to the office, where she sat down at the computer and thought back over the details of her encounter with Craig Branson. From the mind-to-mind contact, she knew a lot about him already. Or maybe none of that was true.
She made a dismissive sound. How would it be possible to lie when you communicated mind to mind with someone? Maybe if you rehearsed a story and fixed it firmly in your thoughts. But if you weren’t expecting the contact, you’d be taken by surprise. That had been true of her and true of Branson, as well. But there was one more possibility she had to consider. What if he was a lunatic who believed the story he’d given her?
She clenched her fists so hard that her nails dug into her palms. Deliberately, she relaxed. The encounter had knocked her off-kilter, but if she was trying to say he was insane, she was grasping at straws, probably because she didn’t want to deal with the shock of what happened when they’d touched each other.
That observation gave her pause. She’d been alone all her life, and wasn’t this what she’d been longing for—a soul mate?
But just at the wrong time. She had already committed herself to another man—a man who considered her his property. What could she hope for with Craig Branson? Was this going to be like that old movie, The Graduate, where the guy comes charging down from San Francisco to stop the woman he loves from marrying the wrong guy? He’s too late to prevent the ceremony, but he takes the bride away anyway.
Was that the fantasy she was hoping for?
Unable to cope with her own muddled thoughts, she put the name Craig Branson into Google and got several hits. There was more than one man by that name, but she quickly zeroed in on the right one.
He owned a private security company, which meant he thought he could go up against John Reynard. But he didn’t know Reynard.
She’d assumed she knew the man, but she was becoming more and more shocked by the things she found out. Not dark facts, but his attitude of owning her—and having her father enslaved to his will.
With a shudder, she put Reynard out of her mind and went back to the information on Craig Branson.
Searching back, she found a newspaper article that made her chest go tight. It was an account of the incident that had killed Craig’s brother. There was a picture of a smiling little boy, obviously a school portrait. He was what she’d imagine Craig would have looked like at the age of eight.
So it was true. He hadn’t made up the story. Her heart was pounding as she scanned the text, reading about the murder of a mob boss in a restaurant and how some of the innocent diners had gotten shot. Most had been wounded. The only fatality was Sam Branson.
The article told her something else. The target in the restaurant had been a mob boss. If John Reynard had something to do with his death, what did that make him? She pushed that question out of her mind because it was more than she could cope with. Which left her contemplating the tragedy.
She sat for a moment, imagining Craig’s reaction to the loss of his brother—and imagining what it must have been like for him to touch her and get back that kind of closeness. Lord, what would her life have been like if she’d had a brother or a sister she could communicate with that way? And what if she’d lost them?
But she’d never had a brother or a sister. She’d once heard her parents talking in whispers about her mom having trouble getting pregnant. She’d gathered that they’d gone to a fertility clinic, but she’d never directly asked about it, because it had seemed like something they wanted to keep quiet.
As she thought about it, long-ago memories came back to her. She remembered being in a waiting room with a lot of other children. Could that have had something to do with the clinic?
It didn’t seem likely because she hadn’t been a baby. Maybe she’d had some illness and her parents had taken her to a specialist?
She wasn’t sure, and probably it wasn’t important. Or maybe it was. She was getting married. Would she have trouble getting pregnant?
A shudder went through her. She wanted children. Maybe she could be close to her own children, the way she’d never been close to her parents. But did she want to have children with John Reynard?
The idea sent another frisson through her. She’d felt trapped the moment she’d agreed to the marriage with Reynard, but meeting Craig Branson had made it worse. Unfortunately, she was drawn to him as she’d never been to her fiancé.
She closed her eyes, willing those thoughts out of her mind. Thoughts of Reynard and of Branson. She had a more immediate problem. Men had come to her shop and threatened her, and she’d better talk to her father about it.
She turned off her computer and looked out the window, seeing the men in the car across the street. They were supposed to be protecting her, but her impulse was to slip away without their knowing it. Because she didn’t trust John? Or because she didn’t like the idea of his having her followed? And she had the feeling that would only get worse if they married.
Chapter Five
Instead of walking out the front door, Stephanie slipped into the courtyard at the side of her house. From there, she went into the alley where her car was parked. Before she’d gotten two blocks from home, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw that she was being followed—by the men who had been sitting out front.
How did they even know she’d left the house? Apparently there was some mechanism for spying on her that she didn’t know about and didn’t understand.
As she drove to her father’s Garden District mansion, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror, checking the men behind her who were making no attempt to hide the fact that they were following. She drove around the block, partly to make the men wonder what she was doing and partly to have a look at the house. Once it had been painted in shades of cream, purple and green to create the classic “painted lady” effect that was so popular in the Garden District, with different colors used to accent different parts of the trim. But the paint had faded, making the house look sad instead of distinctive.
And the shrubbery was overgrown, contributing to the general air of neglect. She hadn’t really looked at the exterior in ages, and it was a shock to see how much the property had gone downhill in the past few years.
When she finally pulled into the driveway, the men stopped on the street in front of the house, watching her through the screen of shrubbery as she walked to the wide front porch. She knocked to let her father know that she was there, then used her key to let herself in.
Once again, she stopped to notice details that she hadn’t paid much attention to in years because they were simply part of the environment. Now she looked around at the familiar furnishings, many of which had been handed down through several generations.
The front hall boasted a long, antique marble-topped chest, centered under an elaborate gilded mirror. Both of them needed dusting. And in the sitting room to her right, she saw the old sofas and chairs that had been in the house since before she was born.
“Dad?”
“Out here,” he called.
She walked through the kitchen that hadn’t been updated since the seventies and into the sunroom that spanned the back of the house. It had always been her favorite room, filled with blooming plants and wrought iron and wicker furniture. And she noted that her father must be keeping it up because the plants all looked healthy.
He was in his favorite wicker chair, where he could look into the room or out at the formal garden. Although the plants in the sunroom were well tended, the back garden was more bedraggled than the front. When she was little, they’d had a crew come by several times a week. Now it was probably once a month, and the neglect showed. Really, she should come over here to trim some of the bushes.
In her spare time, she thought. She was plenty busy with her shop and with the wedding preparations.
She had given the house and garden a critical inspection. Now she did the same thing with her father, who was in his early seventies. Once he’d been a vigorous man. Now his broad shoulders were stooped, and his white hair was thinning on top. His complexion had always been ruddy. The color hadn’t faded, but the lines in his face were more prominent.
He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, a blue-and-red-striped tie, a navy sports jacket and gray slacks as though he might be ready to receive company. The sartorial statement was a holdover from the old days. The world might have switched to casual dress, but her father had stayed with his traditions.
He looked up to meet her gaze.
“You were just here a couple of days ago. Now what?”
It wasn’t a very warm welcome. No “Hello” or “How are you?” But she was used to that kind of reaction from him. She and her father had never had that great a relationship, and it had deteriorated after her mother had died five years ago of ovarian cancer. It had been a quick death because her mother had kept her symptoms to herself until it was too late to do anything about the cancer.
When Stephanie had been a kid, Mom had tried to keep up the appearance of a warm, close family, and maybe she fooled some people who didn’t know them all that well. Dad had always done his own thing. He’d had a sales job that had taken him out of town frequently. Being away from his family had given him the opportunity to gamble. He’d retired several years ago, but since his wife’s death, there had been no one to pull him back from his gambling obsession. Which was how he’d gotten into debt and almost lost the house—until John Reynard had approached him about marrying his daughter.
Dad had always been a pretty decent poker player. In fact, there were many times when he’d won instead of lost. In her more cynical moments, Stephanie wondered if John had somehow arranged for her father to lose—so he could approach him with the offer of financial salvation.
“You know I like to stop by and see how you’re doing,” she answered.
“I’m doing fine,” he said, his brittle voice a counterpoint to the claim.
“That’s good.”
“What’s bothering you?” he asked bluntly.
She might have taken the time to work up to her question, but since he was forcing the issue, she asked, “Are you gambling again?”
He sat up straighter in his chair when he answered, “I agreed not to.”
“That wasn’t the question,” she said, determined to meet his words with equal force.
“I’ve abided by my agreement. Is there some reason why you’re asking?”
“Two men came to my shop and threatened me,” she said.
“What men?”
“They looked like they could be connected with the mob or something.”
“They weren’t there on my account.”
“Are you sure?”
He glared at her. “Maybe you ought to think about what you might have done to attract their attention.”
“I have.”
He kept his gaze on her. “And you can’t think of anything?”
“No.”
“You always did keep your own secrets.”
“I’m not keeping secrets,” she answered, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were a lie. She was keeping the secret of Craig Branson from her father. For several reasons. She knew he wouldn’t approve, and she also knew that he wouldn’t understand about what had happened between her and Branson. Nobody would understand.
Still, she managed to say, “Do you think I’d come over here and ask if you might be the cause of the problem if I already knew what was going on?”
He shrugged. “I never know what to think about you. You were usually off in your own little world—where nobody could reach you. Good luck to John Reynard. He thinks he’s getting what he wants, but he’s in for a surprise.”
She stared at her father, hardly able to believe his words. She’d sacrificed her future to save him, and he was acting as if he didn’t give a damn about her. Had his attitude toward her changed when she’d agreed to marry Reynard? Or had he seen a chance for her to do something useful for the family? And why had she agreed if this was the kind of thanks she got?
“Did I do something particular to upset you?” she asked.
“No.” The word was clipped and she wondered if he was lying.
“All right,” she said, then turned on her heel and left, thinking that this visit had been a waste of time.
Well, not entirely, she corrected herself. She was pretty sure that her father had nothing to do with the men who had threatened her. Which left her—where?
She shivered. She was in danger, and she could let John’s men deal with the threat. Or...
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