Bridal Jeopardy

“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.