Wed In Wyoming

“You’d be surprised at the identities I’ve assumed,” he said, taking back the photographs when she handed them to him. He tucked them back in the envelope, which then disappeared beneath his rain poncho.

“Why do we even need to pretend to be the Stanleys, anyway? The nuns at the convent will surely know we’re not the people who left their children in their safekeeping.”

“Generally, the Mother Superior deals with outsiders. She’s definitely the only one who would have met with Hewitt and Sophia when they took in the children. And she’s currently stuck in Puerto Grande thanks to the weather that we are not going to let stop us.”

“Maybe we can fool a few nuns,” she hesitated for a moment, rather expecting a bolt of lightning to strike at the very idea of it, “but the kids will know we’re not their parents. They will certainly have something to say about going off with two complete strangers.”

“The Stanleys had a code word for their kids. Falling waters. When we get that to them, they’ll know we’re there on behalf of their parents.”

The situation could not possibly become anymore surreal. “How do you know that?”

“Because I do. Believe me, if I thought we could just walk into that convent up there and tell the nuns we were taking the kids away for their own safety, I would. But there’s a reason Hewitt and Sophia chose the place. It’s hellacious to reach, even on a good day. It’s cloistered. It’s small; barely even a dot on the satellite imaging.”

Again she felt that panicky feeling starting to crawl up her throat. “W-what if we fail?” The last time she’d failed had been in Atlanta, and it hadn’t had anything to do with Hollins-Winword. But it had certainly involved a child.

He gave her a sidelong look. “We won’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this when you showed up at the aid camp?” If he had, she would have found some reason to convince him to find someone else.

“Too many ears.” He reached beneath his seat and pulled out a handgun. So great was her surprise, she barely recognized it as a weapon.

In a rapid movement he checked the clip and tucked the gun out of sight where he’d put the envelope of photographs beneath his rain poncho.

She’d grown up on a ranch, so she wasn’t unfamiliar with firearms. But the presence of rifles and shotguns hanging in the gun case in her father’s den was a far cry from the thing that Brody had just hidden away. “We won’t need that though, right?”

“Let’s hope not.” He gave her a look, as if he knew perfectly well how she felt about getting into a situation where they might. “I don’t want to draw down on a nun anymore than the next guy. If we can convince them we’re Hewitt and Sophia Stanley, we won’t have to. But believe me, sweet cheeks, they’re better off if I resort to threats than if Santina’s guy does. They don’t draw the line over hurting innocent people. And if we’re not as far ahead of the guy as I hope, you’re going to be pretty happy that I’ve got—” he patted his side “—good old Delilah with us, sweet cheeks.”

He named his gun Delilah?

She shook her head, discomfited by more than just the gun.

Sandoval certainly hadn’t drawn the line over hurting people, she knew. Not when she’d been four and the man had destroyed her family’s village in a power struggle for control of the verdant land. When he’d been in danger of losing the battle, he’d destroyed the land, too, rather than let someone beat him.

“It’s not sweet cheeks,” she said, and blamed her shaking voice on the cold water still sneaking beneath her poncho. “It’s Sophia.”

Brody slowly smiled. “That’s my girl.”

She shivered again and knew, that time, that it wasn’t caused entirely by cold or nerves.

It was caused by him.

Chapter Two

They abandoned the Jeep where it was mired in the mud and proceeded on foot.

It seemed to take hours before they managed to climb their way up the steep, slick mountainside.

The wind swirled around them, carrying the rain in sheets that were nearly horizontal. Angeline felt grateful for Brody’s big body standing so closely to hers, blocking a fair measure of the storm.

She lost all sense of time as they trudged along. Every step she took was an exercise in pain—her thighs, her calves, her shins. No part of her seemed excused until finally—when her brain had simply shut down except for the mental order to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving—Brody stopped.

He lifted his hand, and beat it hard on the wide black plank that barred their path.

A door, her numb mind realized. “They won’t hear,” she said, but couldn’t even hear the words herself over the screaming wind.

His fingers were an iron ring around her wrist as the door creaked open—giving lie to her words—and he pulled her inside. Then he put his shoulder against the door and muscled it closed again, yanking down the old-fashioned wooden beam that served as a lock.

The sudden cessation of battering wind was nearly dizzying.

It was also oddly quiet, she realized. So much so that she could hear the water dripping off her onto the stone floor.

“Señora.” A diminutive woman dressed in a full nun’s habit held out a white towel.

“Thank you.” Angeline took the towel and pressed it to her face. The weave was rough and thin but it was dry and felt positively wonderful. She lowered it to smile at the nun. “Gracias.”

The woman was speaking rapidly to Brody in Spanish. And though Angeline hadn’t spoken the language of her birth in years, she followed along easily enough. The nun was telling Brody that the Mother Superior was not there to welcome the strangers.

“We’re not strangers,” Brody told her. His accent was nearly flawless, Angeline realized with some vague surprise. “We’ve come to collect our children.”

If Angeline had held any vague notions of other children being at the convent, they were dissolved when the nun nodded. “Sí. Sí.” The nun turned and began moving away from the door, heading down the middle of the three corridors that led off the vestibule.

Brody gave Angeline a sharp look when she didn’t immediately follow along.

She knew she could collapse later, after they knew the children were safe. But just then she wanted nothing more than to just sink down on the dark stone floor and rest her head back against the rough, whitewashed wall.

As if he could read her thoughts, Brody wrapped his hand around her wrist again and drew her along the corridor with him in the nun’s wake.

Like the vestibule, the hallway had whitewashed walls. Though the wash looked pristine, it didn’t mask the rough texture of the wall beneath it. There were no windows, but a multitude of iron sconces situated high up the wall held fat white candles that kept the way well lit. The few electrical sconces spread out less liberally were dark.

Angeline figured they’d walked a good fifty feet before the corridor turned sharply left and opened after another twenty or so feet into a wide, square room occupied by a half-dozen long wooden tables and benches.

The dining hall, the nun informed them briskly. Her feet didn’t hesitate, however, as she kept right on walking.

“You catching all that?” Brody asked Angeline in English.

She nodded. She’d come to English only when Daniel and Maggie Clay had adopted her after her family’s village was destroyed. And though Angeline had deliberately turned her back on the language of her natural parents, she’d never forgotten it, though she’d once made a valiant effort to do so.

She’d already been different enough from the other people in that small Wyoming town where she’d gone to live with Daniel and Maggie. Even before she’d been old enough to understand her actions, she’d deliberately rid the accent from her diction, and copied the vague drawl that the adults around her had possessed. She’d wanted so badly to belong. Not because any one of her adopted family made her feel different, but because inside, Angeline had known she was different.

She’d lived when the rest of her natural family had perished. She’d been rescued from a poor Central American orphanage and been taken to the U.S., where she’d been raised by loving people.

But she’d never forgotten the sight of fire racing through the fields her cousins had tended, licking up the walls and across the roofs of their simple houses. And whatever hadn’t been burned had been hacked down with axes, torn apart with knives, shot down with guns.

Nothing had escaped. Not the people. Not the livestock. Not the land.

Only her.

It was twenty-five years ago, and she still didn’t understand why she’d been spared.

“Sophia.” Brody’s voice was sharp, cutting through the dark memories. Angeline focused on his deep blue eyes and just that abruptly she was back in the present.

Where two children needed them.

“I’m sorry.” How easily she fell back into thinking in Spanish, speaking in Spanish. “The children,” she looked at the nun. “Please, where are they?”

The nun looked distressed. “They are well and safe, señora. But until the Mother Superior returns and authorizes your access to them, I must continue to keep them secure.”

“From me?” Angeline didn’t have to work hard at conjuring tears in her eyes. She was cold, exhausted and entirely undone by the plot that Brody had drawn her into. “I am their mother.” The lie came more easily than she’d thought it would.

The nun’s ageless face looked pitying, yet resolute. “You were the ones who made the arrangement with Mother. But now, you are weary,” she said. “You and your husband need food and rest. We will naturally provide you with both until Mother returns. The storm will pass and soon she will be here to show you to your children.”

“But—”

Brody’s hand closed around hers. “Gracias, Sister. My wife and I thank you for your hospitality, of course. If we could find dry clothes—”

“Sí. Sí.” The nun looked relieved. “Please wait here. I will send Sister Frances to assist you in a moment if that will be satisfactory?”

Brody’s fingers squeezed Angeline’s in warning “Sí.”

She nodded and turned on her heel, gliding back along the corridor. Her long robes swished over the stone floor.

The moment she was out of sight, Brody let go of Angeline’s wrist and she sank down onto one of the long wooden benches situated alongside the tables. She rubbed her wrist, flushing a little when she realized he was watching the action. She stopped, telling herself inwardly that her skin wasn’t really tingling.

What was one more lie there inside that sacred convent, considering the whoppers they were already telling?

Brody sat down beside her and she wanted to put some distance between them given the way he was crowding into her personal space, but another nun—presumably Sister Frances—silently entered the dining area. She gestured for Brody and Angeline to follow, and Brody tucked his hand beneath Angeline’s arm as he helped her solicitously to her feet.

They followed the silent nun down another corridor and up several narrow flights of stairs, all lit with those same iron wall sconces. Finally she stopped and opened a heavy wooden door, extending her hand in a welcoming gesture. Clearly they were meant to go inside.

Angeline passed the nun, thanking her quietly as she entered the room. Brody ducked his head to keep from knocking it against the low sill and followed her inside. The dim room contained a single woefully narrow bed, a single straight-backed wooden chair and a dresser with an old-fashioned ceramic pitcher and basin atop it.

The nun reached up to the sconce on the wall outside the door and pulled down the lit candle, handing it to Brody. She waved her hand toward the two sconces inside the bedroom, and Brody reached up, setting the flame to the candles they contained.

Warm light slowly filled the tiny room as the flames caught. Brody handed the feeder candle back to the nun, who nodded and backed two steps out of the room, pulling the wooden door shut as she went.

Which left Angeline alone with Brody.

The room had no windows, and though Angeline was definitely no fan of small, enclosed spaces, the room simply felt cozy. Cozy and surprisingly safe, considering the surreal situation.

“Well,” he said in a low tone, “that was easier than I expected.”

She gaped. “Easy? They won’t even let us see the children.”

“Shh.” He lifted one of the candles from its sconce and began prowling around the room’s small confines.

She lowered her voice. “What are you looking for?”

He ignored her. He nudged the bed away from the wall. Looked behind it. Under it. Pushed it back. He did the same with the dresser. He turned the washbasin and the pitcher upside down, before replacing them atop the dresser. He even pulled the unlit bare lightbulb out of the metal fixture hanging from the low ceiling. Then, evidently with nothing else to examine, he returned the fat candle to the sconce.

“Don’t think we’re being bugged.”

Her lips parted. “Seriously?”

“I’m a big believer in paranoia.” He looked up at the steady candle flames. “Walls in this place must be about a foot deep,” he said. “Can hardly hear the storm out there.”

And she was closed within them with him in a room roughly the size of the balcony of her Atlanta apartment. “Sorry if I’m not quick on the uptake here. Is that supposed to be good or bad?”

He shrugged, and began pulling off his rain poncho, doing a decent job of not flinging mud onto the white blanket covering the bed. “It ain’t bad,” he said when his head reappeared. “At least we probably don’t have to worry about that hurricane blowing this place to bits.” He dropped the poncho in the corner behind the door. The Rolling Stones T-shirt he wore beneath it was as lamentably wet as her own, and he lifted the hem, pulling the gun and its holster off his waistband.

He tucked them both beneath the mattress.

“Probably,” she repeated faintly. “Bro—Hewitt, what about the children?”

“We’ll get to them,” he said.

She wished she felt even a portion of the confidence he seemed to feel. “What happened to that all-fire rush you were feeling earlier?”

“Believe me, it’s still burning. But first things first.” His long arm came up, his hand brushing her poncho and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Relax. I was just gonna help you take off your poncho.”

She felt her cheeks heat and was grateful for the soft candlelight that would hide her flush. “I knew that.”

He snorted softly.

Fortunately, she was saved from further embarrassment when there was a soft knock on the door.

It only took Brody two steps to reach it, and when it swung open, yet another nun stood on the threshold carrying a wooden tray. She smiled faintly and tilted her head, her black veil swishing softly. But like the sister who’d shown them to the room, she remained silent as she set the tray on the dresser top and began unloading it.

A simple woven basket of bread. A hunk of cheese. A cluster of green grapes. Two thick white plates, a knife, two sparkling clear glasses and a fat round pitcher. All of it she left on the dresser top. She didn’t look at Brody and Angeline as she bowed her head over the repast.

She was obviously giving a blessing. Then she lifted her head, smiled peacefully again and returned to the door. She knelt down, picked up a bundle she’d left outside, and brought it in, setting it on the bed. Then she let herself out of the room. Like Sister Frances, she pulled the door shut as she went.

“Grub and fresh duds,” Brody said, looking happy as a pig in clover. He lifted the off-white bundle from the bed and the items separated as he gave it a little shake. “Pants and top for you. Pants and top for me.” He deftly sorted, and tossed the smaller set toward the two thin pillows that sat at the head of the modest bed.

She didn’t reach for them, though.

He angled her a look. “Don’t worry, beautiful. I’ll turn my back while you change.” His lips twitched. “There’s not even a mirror in here for me to take a surreptitious peek. Now if you feel so compelled, you’re welcome to look all you want. After all,” his amused voice was dry, “we are married.”

Her cheeks heated even more. “Stop. Please. My sides are splitting because you are sooo funny.”

His lips twitched again and he pulled his T-shirt over his head.

Angeline swallowed, not looking away quickly enough to miss the ripped abdomen and wealth of satin-smooth golden skin stretched tightly across a chest that hadn’t looked nearly so wide in the shirt he’d worn. When his hands dropped to the waist of his jeans, she snatched up the clean, dry clothing and turned her back on him.

Then just when she wished the ground would swallow her whole, she heard his soft, rumbling chuckle.

She told herself to get a grip. She was a paramedic for pity’s sake. She’d seen nude men, women and children in all manner of situations.

There’s a difference between nude and naked, a tiny voice inside her head taunted, and Brody’s bare chest was all about being naked.

She silenced the voice and snatched her shirt off over her head, dropping it in a sopping heap on the floor. Leaving on her wet bra would only make the dry top damp, so she snapped it off, too, imaging herself anywhere but in that confining room with Brody Paine. She pulled the dry top over her head.

She tried imagining that she was a quick-change artist as she yanked the tunic firmly over her hips—grateful that it reached her thighs—then ditched her own wet jeans and panties for the dry pants.

She immediately felt warmer.

She knelt down and bundled her filthy clothes together, tucking away the scraps of lace and satin lingerie inside.

“Trying to hide the evidence that you like racy undies?”

Her head whipped around and the towel tumbled off her head.

Brody was facing her, hip propped against the dresser, arms crossed over the front of the tunic that strained slightly in the shoulders. He had an unholy look in his eyes that ought to have had the storm centering all of her fury on them considering their surroundings.

“You promised not to look.”

His mobile lips stretched, revealing the edge of his very straight, very white teeth. “Babe, you sound prim enough to be one of the sisters cloistered here.”

Her cheeks couldn’t possibly get any hotter. “Which doesn’t change the fact that you promised.”

He lifted one shoulder. “Promises are made to be broken.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“How do you know?”

It couldn’t possibly be anymore obvious. “It doesn’t matter how many lines you give me, because the truth is, you couldn’t do the work you do if you didn’t believe in keeping your word,” she said simply.

Chapter Three

Brody looked at Angeline’s face. She looked so… earnest, he thought. Earnest and sexy as hell in a way that had nothing to do with those hanks of black lace he’d gotten a glimpse of.

She’d always been a deadly combination, even in the small doses of time they’d ever spent together.

Was it any wonder that he’d been just as interested in consuming a larger dose as he’d been in avoiding just that?

Complications on the job were one thing.

Complications off the job were nonexistent because that’s the way he kept it.

Always.

But there she was, watching him with those huge, wide-set brown eyes that had gotten to him even on their first, ridiculously brief encounter five years earlier.

He deliberately lifted one eyebrow. “It’s a job, sweet cheeks. A pretty well-paying one.”

“Assembling widgets is a job,” she countered. “Protecting the innocent? Righting wrongs? That’s not just a job and somehow I doubt you do it only for the money.”

“You’re not just prim, you’re a romantic, too,” he drawled.

She frowned a little, possibly realizing the topic had gone somewhat awry. “So what’s the next step?”

He held up a cluster of grapes. “We eat.”

Right on cue, her stomach growled loud enough for him to hear. “Shouldn’t we try to find the children?”

“You wanna pull off our own kidnapping?” He wasn’t teasing.

“That’s essentially what your plan was.”

“I’d consider it more a case of protective custody.”

She pushed her fingers through her hair, holding it back from her face. She didn’t have on a lick of makeup, and she was still more beautiful than ninety-nine percent of the world’s female population.

“Fine. Call it whatever,” she dismissed. “Shouldn’t we be doing something to that end?”

“I told you. First things first. How far do you think we’ll get if we set out right this second? You’re so exhausted I can see the circles under your eyes even in this light and I’m not sure who’s stomach is growling louder. Yours or mine.” He popped a few grapes into his mouth and held up the cluster again. “Come on, darlin’. Eat up.”

“I think we should at least try to see the children. What if that password thing doesn’t work?” But she plucked a few grapes off the cluster and slid one between her full bow-shaped lips. She chewed and swallowed, and avoiding his eyes, quickly reached for more.

“It will.” He tore off a chunk of the bread and handed it to her, and cut the wedge of cheese in half. “Here.”

She sat on the foot of the bed and looked as if she was trying not to wolf down the food. He tipped the pitcher over one of the glasses, filling it with pale golden liquid. He took a sniff. “Wine.” He took a drink. “Pretty decent wine at that.” He poured the second glass and held it out to her.

She took it from him, evidently too thirsty to spend a lot of effort avoiding brushing his fingers the way she usually did. “Wine always goes straight to my head.”

“Goody goody.” He tossed one of the cloth napkins that had been tucked beneath the bread basket onto her lap. “Drink faster.”

She let out an impatient laugh. “Do you ever stop with the come-ons?”

“Do you ever take me up on one?”

She made a face at him. “Why would I want to be just another notch?”

“Who says that’s what you’d be?”

She took another sip of wine. “I’m sure that’s the only thing women are to you.”

“I’m wounded, babe. You’re different than all the others.”

She let out a half laugh. “You are so full of it.”

“And you are way too serious.” He bit into a hunk of bread. He was thirty-eight years old—damn near a decade her senior—but he might as well have been sixteen given the way he kept getting preoccupied with that narrow bed where she was gingerly perched.

“I’m a serious person,” she said around a not-entirely delicate mouthful of bread. “In a serious business.”

“The paramedic business or the spy business?”

“I’m not a spy.”

He couldn’t help smiling again. “Sugar, you’re a courier for one of the biggies in the business.” He tipped more wine into his glass. “And your family just keeps getting pulled in, one way or the other.”

“You ought to know. You’re the one who approached me in the first place to be a courier.”

He couldn’t dispute that. “Still. Don’t you think it’s a little…unusual?”

She didn’t even blink. “You mean how many of us are involved with Hollins-Winword?”

At least she wasn’t as in the dark as her cousin Sarah had been. Sarah’d had no clue that she wasn’t the only one in her family hooked up with Hollins-Winword; probably wouldn’t know even now if her brand-spanking-new husband, Max Scalise, hadn’t tramped one of his own investigations right through Brody’s assignment to protect a little girl named Megan. They’d been staying in a safe house in Weaver, set up by Sarah, who mostly made her living as a school teacher when she wasn’t making an occasional “arrangement” for Hollins-Winword. But she’d only learned that her uncles were involved. She hadn’t learned about Angeline.