Bridegroom Bodyguard (2 page)

Chapter Two

She shouldn’t have screamed, but his falling was such a shock that it slipped out. And started a commotion. Ethan screamed, too—his was high-pitched and bloodcurdling as he reacted to her fear. And people rushed into the room.

These were the people she had passed in the hall, the people posted like guards outside his room. But given the police reports she had seen about the explosion and the previous attempts on his brothers’ lives, she understood the need for security. Yet they had all let her just walk past them. They had asked her no questions; they had only stared...at Ethan, their eyes round with shock.

They had immediately known what it had taken Parker much longer to realize—that she carried his son.

“What did you do to him?” one of his brothers angrily asked her as he crouched next to Parker on the floor. He looked so much like him that he could have been a twin. There were two men that good-looking in the world? It wasn’t fair.

Then a third one rushed forward to help lift Parker back onto the bed. Were they actually triplets? This man’s black hair was shorter—in a military brush cut, but other than that he looked so much like the other two it was uncanny. And Ethan looked like a miniature version of all of them. He must have been the spitting image of what they had looked like as babies.

Parker shrugged off his brothers’ helping hands and stood up again, steadily, as if his strength had already returned. And given the way his heavily muscled arms stretched the sleeves of his hospital gown, he was strong.

“I’m all right,” he assured his concerned family. “I just tried to get up too fast.”

An older woman tore her concerned gaze from Parker to stare at the baby. “Or was it the shock?” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for one of Ethan’s flailing chubby fists. When she touched him, he calmed down, his howls trailing away to soft hiccups. “Of finding out you’re a daddy?”

Parker shook his head then flinched at the motion.
“Mom,”
he exclaimed with shock and exasperation. “I am
not
a daddy.” He glanced at one of his brothers. “Is he yours?”

Of the group of people who’d rushed back into the room, a tawny-haired woman laughed while a blond-haired man snorted derisively.

Parker’s brother’s eyes widened in horror, and he glanced from Ethan to her. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“Neither have I.”

Sharon flinched. They had met a few times, albeit a while ago. How did he not remember her at all?

“You took one heck of a hit on the head,” his brother reminded him. “The doctor said you might have some memory loss because of the concussion.”

“Short-term memory loss,” Parker clarified. “That means I might forget what happened minutes or hours ago, not months ago.”

Sharon should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t remember a woman like her. She had spent her life trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, so there was no wonder that so few people ever noticed her.

But then the older woman glanced up at Sharon, her brown eyes full of warmth and wonder. Her hair was auburn, with no traces of gray, so she didn’t look old enough to have three thirtysomething-old sons, let alone a grandson. “How old is he?”

“Nine months.”

Ethan turned back to her and reached up his free hand toward her hair. Because he loved to pull it, she always bound it tightly and high on the top of her head. But a tendril must have slipped out of the knot because he found something to yank, the fine hairs tugging on her nape. She flinched again over the jolt of pain.

Mrs. Payne chuckled. “The boys always pulled my hair, too,” she said. “May I hold him?” She held out her arms as she asked, and the baby boy leaned toward her, almost falling into her embrace.

Panic flashed through Sharon at how easily he had been taken from her. That was what would happen when these people learned the truth. She would be cut out of Ethan’s life as though she had never been a part of it.

“Mom.” Parker drew the older woman’s attention briefly from the baby she held with such awe. “Can you bring him out into the hall?” He turned toward the others. “And the rest of you leave with her. I need to talk to Ms. Wells alone.”

Sharon’s panic increased, making her pulse race. She lifted her arms to reach for Ethan, to take him back, but the woman was already walking out the door with the sweet baby. And Parker grabbed her outstretched arms, holding her back, as all the others left.

She hadn’t really been alone with him before. She’d had Ethan. Even though he was a baby, he had been protection from Parker’s wrath. He had to be furious. And he had every right to be. His son had been kept from him, and someone was trying to kill him.

But he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill.

* * *

H
OURS
BEFORE
,
the explosion had knocked Parker on his ass, literally. Sharon Wells’s announcement, that the baby was his son, had knocked him on his ass, as well, although he would have rather blamed it on the concussion. But he’d recovered quickly.

Sharon was the one trembling now, as he held her arms. A diaper bag hung heavily from one of her thin shoulders, bumping against her side. She stepped back and jerked free of his grasp; apparently she was stronger than she looked.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “This was a mistake....”

“Trying to pass that kid off as mine?” he asked. “That was a mistake.”

And why had she done it? What had she hoped to gain? If she had been hoping to force someone to marry her, Cooper or Logan would have been the better bet; they cared more about honor than he did. But, damn his short-term memory, they were already married.

“He
is
yours,” she insisted. She held his gaze, her strange light brown eyes direct and sincere. “You can get a paternity test to prove it. Since we’re at the hospital, maybe they can rush the results.”

He dropped his hands from her arms and stepped back. “You’re serious....”

“It’s just a cheek swab,” she said. “It won’t hurt him or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

Because she loved her son...

Their son?

He scrutinized her face. The women he usually dated wore makeup and dressed in clothes that flattered their figures. But with her enormous, unusual eyes and delicate features, she didn’t really need makeup. She was actually quite beautiful. And his pulse quickened as attraction kicked in, tempting him to see just what her figure was like beneath her baggy suit.

Because of those eyes and that face and his sudden attraction to her, he knew he’d never met her before—much less been with her.

“There is no way that I am the father of
your
baby,” he insisted. “I would not have forgotten you if we’d ever been intimate.”

He wasn’t the careless playboy everyone thought he was. He didn’t have a slew of conquests whose faces he couldn’t remember.

Her gaze dropped from his, and her face flushed. “But—but you have a concussion....”

He shook his head, and pain from making the motion overwhelmed him. But he kept his legs under him this time and remained conscious. And finally the confusion from the concussion receded, leaving him angry.

“There is no way that
your
child is mine.”

“Take the paternity test,” she urged him. “Ethan is your son.”

Like everyone else, she must have believed that he was such a playboy that he wouldn’t remember every woman he’d ever slept with, but his reputation was grossly exaggerated and mostly undeserved. Even with the women with whom he was involved, he always used protection. He couldn’t have gotten
anyone
pregnant. So she had to be playing some angle with him, running some scheme.

Why? That paternity test she was urging him to get would only prove him right. So was she just buying some time? Was she just trying to distract him? What did she hope to gain? Did she want to collect the payout for his murder? From what Garek Kozminski had said, it sounded like a substantial amount.

Maybe he needed to search that diaper bag and make certain that she didn’t have a weapon concealed. Or maybe a bomb. He reached for the strap of the bag, but his hand grazed her breast instead.

Her already enormous eyes widened with shock.

She wasn’t the only one surprised. Her baggy suit hid some curves. Parker was as intrigued as he was suspicious of her.

“What—what are you doing?” she asked, her voice all breathy and anxious.

“You’re trying to convince me that I made a baby with you and the concussion made me forget.” No wonder she had taken the opportunity to show up now after hearing the news reports about his condition. “The effects of this concussion aren’t going to last,” he continued.

She nodded, either in agreement or because she was humoring him.

How far would she go to humor him? And to further whatever her agenda really was? He wanted to find out. “My memory can be jogged,” he told her.

“I—I still don’t understand,” she stammered.

“Jog my memory,” he challenged her, as he cupped her shoulders and pulled her closer.

Her eyes widened even more as she stared up at him. “Me? You want me to jog your memory?” she asked. “How?”

“Kiss me.” But he didn’t wait for her to take his bait; he reeled her in first. He tipped up her chin and lowered his mouth to hers.

Instead of jogging his memory, the kiss proved to him that he had never kissed her before—because it was all new. The silkiness of her lips, the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she gasped. He took advantage of that gasp to deepen the kiss, to slide his tongue inside her mouth.

His pulse raced and his head grew light again, but he didn’t blame the concussion for that reaction. He blamed her. Because now she was kissing him back, her tongue sliding over his, her lips pressing against his. If her goal was just to distract him, she was doing a damn good job.

He skimmed his hands up her face to that frustrating knot on top of her head. And he tugged her hair free so that it tumbled down around her shoulders. When he had first seen her, he must have still been half-blind from the concussion. Because there was no other explanation for how he hadn’t realized how beautiful she was....

She was every bit as beautiful—maybe even more beautiful—than any other woman he had ever dated. But he’d never dated her before.

It wasn’t just the first kiss with her—it felt bigger than that. More monumental. It was as if the earth was shaking beneath his feet.

Or at least the building. The structure rumbled, and the windows rattled. There were no earthquakes in Michigan—so it had to be another explosion.

Someone had set a bomb inside the hospital? Someone was so desperate to kill him that they were willing to risk the lives of more innocent people?

Of this woman? And her baby?

Smoke alarms blared, but the warning was too late. The bomb had already gone off. How many people had been hurt? And would more people be harmed trying to escape the hospital?

The commotion in the hall was so loud that it affected his throbbing head. Voices rose in fear and confusion. Footsteps pounded as if people stampeded in their panic. He glanced toward the window that had rattled. Flames reflected back from the glass. Was it too late to escape?

Or were they already trapped?

Chapter Three

The flames rose from the burning scraps of metal...of what used to be Sharon’s car. She remembered where she’d parked it—between the Mini Cooper that had rolled over from the force of the blast and the SUV that was already blackened from the heat of the explosion.

She gasped as she peered out the window around Parker’s broad shoulder. Her heart pounded erratically. Well, even more erratically than it had when he’d kissed her. She couldn’t think about that kiss right now.

She could think only about what could have happened to Ethan and her if they had been in that car. She pressed her hand over her mouth to hold back a scream of terror. The little boy was so smart and so sweet and affectionate. His life had barely begun; it could not be lost now.

She had already determined that she would do whatever was necessary to keep him safe. But bringing him here had been a mistake. She turned away from the window and headed toward the hall.

But Parker caught her arm, stopping her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I need to find Ethan,” she said.

She needed to hold him, to make certain that the baby boy was all right. Loud noises terrified him; so did too many people, especially strangers. It was a miracle that he’d gone so willingly into Mrs. Payne’s arms, but that had been before the explosion and the chaos.

“I need to be with—”

“Here he is,” Mrs. Payne said as she walked back into the room with her grandson.

Just as Sharon had feared, he was crying. Tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. His screams must have escalated to hysteria because all he was doing now was gasping for shaky breaths.

She reached for him, and he nearly leaped into her arms, snuggling into her neck. His hands clutched her hair, pulling it around him. And she didn’t even care. Her eyes stung with tears at the thought of losing him. She loved this little boy so much; she couldn’t love him any more if he was actually hers.

* * *

“I
T
WAS
HERS
.”
Logan confirmed what Parker had already suspected when he’d realized that the explosion had been a car in the parking lot blowing up.

At least it hadn’t been inside the hospital or close enough to the building to cause any structural damage. The windows had rattled and the floor had shaken, and the smoke from the parking lot had set off some of the alarms.

Logan added, “And the kid is yours.”

Stunned, Parker tensed and paused with his hand on his gun. That baby was his? But that made no sense. Unless...

Like a hostage at a bank holdup, Logan lifted his arms. “Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.”

Parker slid his gun into the holster he had strapped under his arm. God, it felt good to be out of that hospital gown. And in a few minutes, he would be out of the hospital, too. After the explosion in the parking lot and all the media trying to get past security, he doubted that the doctor would protest his leaving early.

“The tests came back already?” he asked as he tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart.

It had been just as she’d said—just a simple cheek swab. From the baby. And him. And Logan and Cooper.

“Mom sweet-talked someone in the lab into rushing the results,” Logan replied.

Only a couple of hours had passed since the car exploded. The paternity test had been taken before the police arrived to talk to them. An officer had taken Sharon into a separate room, no doubt to question why and when someone would have put a bomb on her car. The police would have run the registration or vehicle number, if nothing had been left of the plate, to find out who owned it.

Parker had wanted to hear Sharon’s answers, too. But those weren’t the only answers he wanted from Sharon Wells.

“So who is she?” Logan asked.

“I have no idea,” he replied honestly.

Logan gestured around the hospital room. “It’s just you and me, Park. Tell me the truth.”

“I have no idea,” he repeated.

“So she was just a one-night stand?”

His temper rising, Parker grabbed the front of his twin’s shirt. “She’s not a one-night stand.” Not his, and he doubted, from the innocent way she dressed, that she was anyone else’s. He just wished he knew what exactly she was. A con artist? A killer? A kidnapper?

He hoped like hell she was none of those things. But he couldn’t let the sweetness of her kiss alleviate his suspicions about her.

“But you don’t even know who she is,” Logan pointed out.

“I’m going to change that,” he said. When the police were done with her, he was going to take his turn interrogating her. Hopefully he hadn’t lost his touch from his years with the River City Police Department. Of course, he had spent more time undercover than interrogating suspects. That had been more Logan’s job, which he was proving with his inquisition of him.

“Since you’ve got a baby together, that would probably be a good thing,” Logan remarked. He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re a father....”

Neither could Parker. But he had no reason to doubt the test. The only one he doubted was Sharon Wells.

* * *

T
HIS
HAD
BEEN
a mistake. Sharon had realized that even before Parker Payne had kissed her. She should not have come here. But she had been warned to trust no one else. So she hadn’t told the police anything—not that she’d had much to tell them. She really had no idea who was trying to kill her or why. But she hadn’t told the officers about the other attempts on her life.

And she had tried to pass this one off as her car being mistaken for someone else’s—maybe even Parker Payne’s. He was the one who someone was trying to kill—or so the news reports had claimed.

The gray-haired police officer opened the door of the vacant doctor’s office he had used to question her and held it for her. She had her hands full with the diaper bag and the sleeping baby. Ethan had exhausted himself from crying, but even in slumber, he clung to her, strands of her hair clutched in his chubby little fists.

How could she love this child so much? He had never been part of her plan. She had never wanted to marry or have children; she had intended to focus only on her career.

“You’re very lucky, miss,” the officer told her.

How? Along with her car, Sharon had lost her purse and her suitcases. She sighed. “I know it was just a vehicle...”

She could replace the money and other lost items; she would not have been able to replace Ethan. But even though he hadn’t been hurt in the explosion, she was still going to lose him.

To his father...

“The car wasn’t the only thing lost,” the officer informed her. “The bomb didn’t go off until someone started the engine.”

“But I had the keys,” she murmured. But when she patted the pocket on the front of the diaper bag, she realized they weren’t there. She must have left them dangling from the ignition.

“Security cameras picked up someone checking out cars in the lot, obviously looking for one to steal,” the officer said.

“Someone was trying to steal my car?” Because she had left the keys and the purse and the suitcases...

How had she been so careless? She’d had her hands full with Ethan. But she’d also been scared to bring Parker Payne a baby he hadn’t even known he had.

Shaking his head as if in pity of the dead carjacker, the officer said, “He picked the wrong car to steal.”

And he’d died because of it—because of
her.
She gasped as guilt and regret overwhelmed her. But then a strong hand gripped her shoulder, squeezing gently as if offering reassurance.

She glanced up at Parker Payne. He was dressed in a shirt nearly as blue as his brilliant eyes; it was tucked into a pair of faded jeans. She kind of missed the hospital gown.

“Did the security cameras pick up who planted the bomb?” Parker asked the officer.

The older man shook his head again with regret. “The bomber knew where the cameras were and avoided them. We’re going to have the techs go over the footage again to see if they can find anything usable.”

Parker nodded in approval.

She was surprised the officer had been so free with information about a police investigation. But then the older man clasped Parker’s shoulder.

“Glad you’re alive, Payne,” he said. “Losing your father was hard enough.”

A muscle twitched along Parker’s clenched jaw, and he nodded again.

“You tired of working for your brother yet?” he asked. “We’d love to have you back on the force.”

Parker arched a brow as if in skepticism of the older man’s claim.

“Well, maybe not now,” the officer amended, “but once you find out who’s trying to kill you...”

“That’ll be soon,” Parker promised.

“We’ll help,” the officer said. He turned to Sharon. “But until that person is caught, you might want to stay away from Mr. Payne, miss. For your own safety...”

She had already discovered she wasn’t safe anywhere, either.

“We’ll protect her, too,” Parker said. “It’s what Payne Protection does.”

His family ran a security firm; he acted as a bodyguard. But what happened when he was the one needing protection? Who protected him?

He stepped back to allow the officer to pass him, and she saw the others standing just down the hall. The brothers who looked so much like him and the other two men who looked like each other with their blond hair and light-colored eyes. All of the men watched him and her carefully, as if they didn’t even trust
her
not to try to kill him.

But then, they were smart to trust no one—especially not her. She needed to tell him the truth. But when she turned back to him and found him staring in wonder at the sleeping baby she held, she realized that he already knew.

“He is your son,” she said.

“I know.” But he shook his head as if he was still in denial of being a dad. Or maybe that wasn’t what he was denying....

He was denying
her.

Pain clutched her heart, and even though it killed her to admit it, she added, “I am not his mother.”

“I know.”

Of course he knew. Despite the concussion, he would have remembered her had they ever been involved. But they would have never been involved. Even when they’d previously met, they hadn’t been formally introduced; they had only glanced at each other in passing. Apparently he hadn’t noticed her, but she had noticed him. It was impossible to not notice a man as devastatingly handsome and charming as Parker Payne.

But he wasn’t her type any more than she was his. She would never have gone for a man with his reputation or with his good looks. The only men she had ever dated, and there had been only a few, had been as serious about their education and their careers as she had been.

Before her little man had come along. Before Ethan...

So what was she supposed to do now? Hand Parker Payne his son and walk away? That was what she had been instructed to do, but her car was gone now. Her purse and money, too. She had no means with which to walk away...even if she could bring herself to turn her little man over to strangers.

“You’re coming with me,” he told her, as if he had read her mind or, more likely, seen her indecision. “And you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on....”

If only she knew...

But just as she hadn’t immediately admitted that she wasn’t Ethan’s mother, she stalled on admitting her ignorance, too. She needed more time with the little boy—enough time to make sure he would be safe...without her.

Parker’s hand moved to her elbow now, as he guided her toward his family and friends. “We need a diversion,” he told them, “a way to get out of here and make sure that no one follows us.”

One of his brothers nodded. “We’ll distract whoever might be watching. Do you have a safe place to take them?”

Parker nodded.

But Sharon felt no relief. Parker might be able to keep them safe from whoever was after them. But who would keep her safe from him?

One of the light-haired men spoke. “I found out more information from my contacts.”

Parker lifted a brow in question. “You know who ordered the hit on me?”

He shook his head. “No, but I know that you’re not the only one. A hit was put out on someone else the same day as it was put out on you.”

His eyes darkening with concern, Parker glanced toward his brother.

And the man shook his head again. “It’s on a woman.” His gray-eyed gaze focused on her. “A woman named Sharon Wells.”

So she hadn’t just been in the wrong places at the wrong times. It had not been coincidence or mistaken identity. Someone was definitely trying to kill
her.
Someone wanted both her and Parker Payne dead.