Bridegroom Bodyguard

But she didn’t find the bag behind the desk. She found something else instead—something she wished she had never seen. As she gave in to the fear and hysteria overwhelming her, screams burned her throat.

Chapter Six

Parker had known he shouldn’t have brought Sharon along with him. But since there wasn’t a hit out on Brenda, he hadn’t thought they would be in danger in her mansion—as long as he made certain that they weren’t followed. Now he knew why there was no hit on the judge.

She was already dead. On the floor behind her desk, her body sprawled across the toppled-over leather chair. Her neck was bent at an odd angle—not because of how she was lying but because her neck had been broken. Blood, trailing from her mouth, had dried into a thick, black pool beneath her head. Her face was ghostly white. She must have been dead for a while. It could have been days, or weeks....

Sharon trembled and shivered in his arms. She was in shock.

But at least she had finally stopped screaming. Her voice had grown hoarse and cracked before she had finally calmed down, before she had finally stopped punching her fists into his chest and collapsed against him.

He shouldn’t have brought her here. He should have known it was a possibility that they might find the judge dead. But he was more surprised by what they hadn’t found. Her bodyguard. While Brenda might not have let any other staff stay overnight, she would have kept the bodyguard—especially since she must have been aware that she was in danger.

Why else had she sent the baby away with Sharon? She must have loved her son—their son. Maybe Brenda Foster hadn’t been as manipulative and selfish a woman as he had once thought she was. She had tricked and lied to him, but as long as she’d loved their son...

“I’m sorry,” Sharon murmured, as she clutched at his shirt, which was damp from her tears. “So sorry...”

Why was she apologizing?

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “And I am. I shouldn’t have brought you here. You shouldn’t have had to see your boss like this....”

She drew in a shuddery breath, fighting back more sobs. “But she was the mother of your son.” Her voice cracked and the tears began to fall again. “Ethan...”

His son no longer had a mother. And the boy’s father had been aware of him for only hours....

Now Parker was solely responsible for him? He had no idea how to take care of a baby, how to be a father. A twinge of panic struck his heart, but he ignored it. He would figure it out—with his family’s help. So he pushed aside that worry and focused on the woman trembling in his arms. He had to be strong for her.

But instead of clinging to him, she began to tense and ease away from him.

“Are you all right?” he asked Sharon. “I need to make some calls.”

She nodded and pulled completely away from him. Replacing his arms with hers, she wrapped them around herself—as if trying to hold herself together. “Of course. You have to call the police.”

She must have noticed his hesitation because she gasped and asked, “You are calling the police, right?”

He wasn’t sure that he should and reminded Sharon, “Brenda told you to trust nobody but me.”

Those already enormous eyes widened as if she was scared that she had trusted the wrong man. “B-but you can’t just leave her here like this....”

Brenda Foster was beyond help. It was Sharon and Ethan about whom he was concerned. But the crime scene needed to be processed for evidence. So he reached for his phone. But his first call wasn’t to the police.

He had called a woman—a beautiful, young woman with auburn hair and brown eyes. She showed up before the police arrived. But he didn’t let her look at the body; he didn’t even let her past the security-system control panel at the door to the den.

And goose bumps rose on Sharon’s skin beneath the thin material of her jacket. What if Brenda had been wrong about him? What if she shouldn’t have trusted Parker Payne?

“Are you all right?” the woman asked Sharon, her brown eyes warm with concern.

Sharon must have looked as pale and sick as she felt. Seeing Brenda like that... It had brought back so many horrific memories that she had lost it. And she was barely hanging on to her composure now. She could only nod.

The woman turned toward Parker. “Did you call an ambulance?”

Parker glanced up from where he was studying the body—that horribly broken and lifeless body—behind the desk. “She’s been beyond medical help for a while now.”

“I’m not talking about the judge....” She gestured toward Sharon.

“I’m—I’m okay,” she insisted. “I don’t need an ambulance.”

“She’s in shock.” The woman spoke again to Parker, as if Sharon wasn’t even in the room.

Who were they to each other? Obviously the brunette worked in the security business, too, since she hooked a laptop to the security panel at the door, so familiar with the high-tech system that she must have handled it all the time.

Parker moved from behind the desk to join the woman at the door. But she didn’t look at him; she was focused on the laptop instead. How could she ignore Parker Payne? How could any woman? He turned toward Sharon and studied her face. “Are you really all right?”

She nodded again. Physically, she was fine. Emotionally, she was a mess. But it wasn’t just over finding another dead body. It was over the suspicion that had begun to niggle at her.

Why had Parker called this woman to mess with the security system? To cover his tracks?

And Sharon had left Ethan with his family. If Parker couldn’t be trusted, could she trust any of the Paynes?

“I—I should get back to Ethan,” she said. “He’ll be afraid if he wakes up and I’m not there.”

“Ethan?” The young woman’s breath caught, and she stared at Sharon. “Is that...your baby’s name?”

Parker hadn’t told anyone that Sharon wasn’t the boy’s mother; he had told them only that he had to talk to the judge, for whom Sharon worked. He hadn’t told them the reason specifically, only that Judge Foster might have some involvement or information about why someone wanted him and Sharon dead.

Judge Foster couldn’t help them now. Not when she had already become a victim....

But whose victim?

“Ethan is my son,” Parker told the woman. “You could have met him at the hospital if you’d been there....”

If they meant anything to each other, why hadn’t she been at the hospital when he had been wounded in that explosion? He was obviously hurt that she hadn’t come to see him, so this woman was important to him.

If Sharon had been involved with him, she would have rushed to his side. Heck, she wasn’t involved with him, but she had rushed to the hospital as soon as she had seen the news of the explosion at Payne Protection. Of course, she had been trying to find him anyway because the two weeks had already ended with no word from Brenda.

Now she knew why....

“I was there,” the woman replied.

Parker’s brow furrowed. “You were? Then why didn’t you come see me?”

She shrugged, but her thin shoulders were tense. “What do you want to know from the security system?”

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