Bridal Jeopardy

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.”