Explosive Engagement

“That didn’t stop you,” Stacy bitterly remarked.

“I had no right to what, dear?” Penny Payne asked as she joined them in the church. Unlike him and Parker who wore the wedding tuxedos, she’d changed from her bronze-colored mother-of-the-bride gown into a black dress. She hadn’t been on the steps to see off Cooper and Tanya. She must have been changing then—as if she’d always intended to attend the funeral of the man who’d murdered her husband.

“Why are you here, Mom?” he asked. He doubted he would ever understand her, but neither had his father. It hadn’t stopped Nicholas Payne from loving her, though. And it wouldn’t stop Logan, either, unless he wound up like his father: dead at the hands of a Kozminski.

Out of respect for Mrs. Payne, Stacy motioned her brothers back, but they were already stepping away from Logan. They wouldn’t touch him now—not in front of his mother. She couldn’t promise they wouldn’t exact some revenge later.

Even now she wondered...

Could one of them have fired those shots at the wedding? Her heart pounded heavily with dread and fear. She couldn’t lose one of them like she’d lost her father—to prison. They had both already spent too much time behind bars.

And she couldn’t lose Logan Payne, either. Not for herself. She didn’t care about him. But his mother loved him. And it would kill her to lose a child like she’d lost her husband.

Mrs. Payne swung her hand toward that child’s face. His reflexes weren’t fast enough to stop her palm from connecting with his cheek. It wasn’t quite a slap but a very forceful pat. “Why are you here?” she asked him.

“You must have heard the gunshots outside the church,” he replied. “Somebody tried to kill me again.”

Her hand trembled against his cheek, and she sucked in a shaky breath before asking, “Again?”

He groaned as if in regret at his slip or embarrassment of her concern. “Mom...”

Stacy’s lips twitched at how close Logan Payne came to sounding like a petulant child. Even when he’d been a child of just seventeen at her father’s trial, he had already seemed like a man. Strong. Intimidating. Independent.

“You don’t need to be concerned,” he assured his mother. “I’m putting a stop to it now. That’s why I’m here.”

“How is coming here putting a stop to anything?” Mrs. Payne asked, her usually smooth brow furrowed with confusion.

“You know how,” he said.

“No, I don’t.” She shook her head.

“It’s one of them,” he insisted, but his gaze focused on Stacy.

“I don’t understand,” his mother continued. “Did you see one of them with the gun?”

Logan shook his head now.

“Then you have no business coming here today of all days,” she said, “unless you’ve come to express your condolences and pay your respects.”

“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, his deep voice vibrating with betrayal. “Are you here to pay your respects to the man who killed your husband...who killed my father?”

Stacy’s heart lurched with the pain in his voice. He was wrong about who’d taken his dad, but he’d still lost him, even sooner than she’d lost hers. At least she had been able to see her father the past fifteen years even though it had been behind bars.

“I am here for Stacy,” Mrs. Payne replied, and her arm came around Stacy’s shoulders.

She’d tried so hard to be strong—to be tough like her brothers and like Logan. But Mrs. Payne’s warmth and affection crumbled the wall she’d built around herself so many years ago. Her shoulders began to shake like her knees had earlier.

“Is it okay with you that I’m here?” Mrs. Payne asked. “If it’s too difficult, we’ll all leave...”

“That would be best,” a woman chimed in.

Stacy glanced up to see her aunt and uncle walking down the aisle toward them. Aunt Marta was tall and thin with frosted blond hair and a frosty personality. Uncle Iwan’s hair had thinned while his body had widened. He was a big, imposing man, but he smiled at her. Aunt Marta glared. That look wasn’t meant for Mrs. Payne but for Stacy. She’d been on the receiving end of it many times, but she was not yet immune to the coldness and shivered.

Mrs. Payne wrapped her arm more tightly around her, as if protecting her. She had done that in court fifteen years ago. A new widow then, she had still found sympathy for the daughter of the man convicted of killing her husband. Mrs. Payne had attended other court dates in Stacy’s life—offering her support when Milek and Garek had faced their charges.

Stacy clutched at the older woman’s waist. “Please,” she murmured through the emotion choking her, “please stay...”

Mrs. Payne nodded. “Whatever you need, honey...”

Logan reached out a hand for his mother as if to tug her away from Stacy. He did not have Mrs. Payne’s forgiving soul and warm heart. He was full of hatred and bitterness. But then his fingers curled into his palm and he pulled back his hand.

“We’ll discuss this later,” he said.

Stacy knew he spoke to her, not his mother, and his words were a threat. He still considered her and her family responsible for the attempts on his life. And she wasn’t entirely convinced he was wrong, especially with the way her brothers eyed him. He wasn’t the only one in that church who was full of hatred and bitterness.

For the next hour those feelings were put aside, though, for grief and loss during the funeral mass and burial. While the others left for the funeral luncheon at what had been her father’s favorite pub, she stayed behind at his grave site.

But she was not alone. She stared down at the fresh dirt covering her father’s grave. A light breeze fluttered the leaves in the trees and tumbled the loose soil across the grave. She shivered at the cold, but it wasn’t the breeze chilling her. It was the loss.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Payne said. She hadn’t gone with the others to the pub. She had stayed behind with Stacy, continuing to offer her support and sympathy. If only Stacy’s own mother was as loving and affectionate...

But she was like Aunt Marta—she loved money and herself more than anyone else. Even her own children...

Stacy shook her head. “You have no reason to apologize.”

“I am apologizing for my son,” Mrs. Payne explained.

Knowing how much Logan would hate that, Stacy smiled and finally pulled her gaze away from the ground to face the older woman. “He’s thirty-two years old. His mother should not be making apologies for him any longer.”

Mrs. Payne smiled, too. “She has to when he’s too stubborn to do it himself.”

“He doesn’t think he has a reason to apologize,” Stacy pointed out. “He thinks he’s right.” He always thought he was right.

“You are not responsible for those attempts on his life,” Mrs. Payne defended her.

The woman’s faith in Stacy warmed her heart. Not many other people in her life had trusted her so fully.

“No, I’m not,” she said. Just like her father, she was not a killer.

Mrs. Payne’s eyes were warm and brown but they had the same intensity of her son’s blue eyes as her gaze focused on Stacy’s face. “But you’re not entirely certain someone in your family didn’t fire those shots.”

Stacy sucked in a breath of shock. Had Mrs. Payne really been offering her support, or had she been manipulating her into betraying her brothers?

“I can see your doubts.”

Like her, they blamed Logan for their father’s death. He hadn’t put the shiv in him, but he had made certain that he stayed in prison long enough that someone else had. Her brothers had even suggested that Logan might have hired the other inmate to commit the murder. She didn’t believe that; she knew Logan hadn’t wanted her father dead. He’d just wanted him to suffer. And he hadn’t cared that she’d suffered, too. Her brothers had cared, though—maybe too much.

But in reply to Mrs. Payne’s remark, Stacy shook her head again in denial. She would not betray her brothers. She owed them too much: her life.

“I don’t expect you to admit it,” Mrs. Payne said. “You’re too loyal for that—too protective of them.”

She wasn’t nearly as protective of them as her brothers were of her. They had sacrificed so much to keep her safe. She would do the same.

“And you’re protective of your son,” Stacy said. She’d seen how shaken the woman had been that there had been attempts on his life. “Is that why you’re here?”

“I’m here for you,” Mrs. Payne insisted. “But if Logan is right...” She shuddered. “I can’t lose him like I lost his father.” She reached out again and took Stacy’s hand in hers. “And I don’t want you to lose your brothers, either.”

Tears of frustration stung Stacy’s eyes. “I can’t...”

But as Mrs. Payne had seen, she already doubted them. Even if they weren’t the ones attempting to kill him, they could be picked up on suspicion because they’d been so angry and so vocal about their hatred of Logan. She swallowed a lump of emotion. “I’ll talk to them, make sure that they’re not behind the shootings.”

Mrs. Payne sighed. “It’s too bad you have to have that conversation—that you have to show them you doubt them, that you think they could be responsible, that you think they could be killers.”

After all they’d done for her, she didn’t want to hurt them any more than they were already hurting. They had lost their father, too. “Then what do I do?”

Mrs. Payne squeezed her hand. “You marry him.”

“What?” She couldn’t have heard her right. It was like the words her father had uttered on his dying breath— incomprehensible.

“Your brothers would never do anything to hurt you,” Mrs. Payne said. “So if they believe you’re in love with Logan, they won’t hurt him.”

“I—I can’t convince them of such a blatant lie...”

“You can if you marry him...”

Marry the man she despised more than any other? It just wasn’t conceivable. She wasn’t the only one shocked and appalled at such a terrible union.

A deep gasp drew her attention away from Mrs. Payne to her son. Logan stood near a monument behind her. His blue eyes were wide with shock and horror at his mother’s outrageous suggestion. Then his lips began to move. But no words were uttered, or if they were, the shots drowned out his voice.

Gunshots reverberated throughout the cemetery, echoing around the monuments and trees. The sudden loud noise sent the birds flying from the tree limbs to form a dark cloud in the sky above them.

Not only had Logan Payne intruded on her father’s funeral but so had his killer. Mrs. Payne’s plan was never going to happen, because Stacy would probably wind up burying him before she could ever marry him.

Chapter Three

Pain gripped Logan’s shoulder, but he ignored the hot streak down his arm as he reached for his holster and drew his weapon. “Get down!” he shouted.

His mother had instinctively ducked behind a cement monument. But Stacy stood still at her father’s freshly dug grave, so when he knocked her down, she hit soft ground. Her breath left her lips in a gasp of warm air that caressed his neck.

And her soft curves cushioned his fall. She always acted so strong that he had expected her to be hard and cold. But she was soft and warm. She was also smaller than her big personality and more fragile than her tough attitude.

“Are you okay?” he asked as the shots continued to ring out, knocking leaves and twigs from the trees so they rained down on them like debris during a hurricane. For some reason he felt as though he were in the middle of a storm and not just of gunfire but of emotion.

Had his mother really suggested what he’d thought he heard? No. He must have misconstrued her words. Not even she was a big enough matchmaker to consider a marriage between him and Stacy Kozminski at all possible.

Stacy stared up at him through gray eyes wide with shock but hopefully not pain.

“Were you hit?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

Eyes still wide, she finally moved as she shook her head.

“Mom?” he called out. “Mom?”

“I—I’m okay,” she replied, but her voice cracked with fear. As usual, it wasn’t for herself as she anxiously asked, “Are you and Stacy okay?”

“Yeah...” He shifted, moving to roll off Stacy and return fire now that he knew she and his mother were safe. But Stacy gripped his shoulder, and he flinched in pain.

“You’ve been shot,” she said, her voice breaking with urgency and concern. For him?

He shrugged his shoulders, but there was a twinge of pain. Maybe more than a twinge. He grimaced and lied, “I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding,” she said. Her palm smeared with his blood, she lifted it toward his face as if presenting him with evidence.

He didn’t need to see it; he could feel it, sticking his sleeve to his skin. He glanced down then and noted the tear in the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. Oh, Mom was going to be annoyed that he’d ruined another one...

“Are—are you hurt?” his mother asked, and unconcerned about her own safety, she began to rise from behind the monument.

“Stay down,” he warned her.

“The shooting stopped,” she pointed out.

But that didn’t mean that the shooter was gone. He could have just been biding his time until he got a clear shot. And if someone really wanted to hurt Logan, he or she could do that most effectively by hurting his mother.

“Stay down,” he told her again. “Don’t move until we get backup.” Maybe he shouldn’t have convinced Parker and Nikki and Candace that he didn’t need their protection. Maybe he should have let them stay with him like they’d wanted. Knowing them, they might have ignored his wishes—like his mother usually did.

Sirens wailed as police cars approached, lights flashing through the tree branches.

Stacy stiffened beneath him. Apparently, she had inherited her family’s aversion to law enforcement. “Your backup has arrived.”

To him, backup was his family and employees. But the police would do. He doubted they would apprehend the shooter, though. His mother was right; he was gone. He’d gotten away again.

He rolled off Stacy and stood up. Then he extended his uninjured arm to her. She stared at his hand before putting hers into it. Her hand was small and delicate inside his but not so delicate that she didn’t have calluses.

“Maybe there will be an ambulance, too,” she said.

“I don’t need one.”

“You were shot.”

“You were shot?” his mother asked, her voice shrill with alarm as she rushed over to him.

“I was just grazed,” he assured them. “There’s no bullet in me.” This time. But every attempt got a little closer, a little more successful. The shooter wasn’t going to stop until Logan was dead.

* * *

STACY WAS FURIOUS and for once her anger wasn’t directed at Logan Payne. Her heels clicking against the slate floor, she stomped across the crowded pub to the knotty pine-paneled back room where her family was drinking a farewell toast to her father.

Or was their farewell to Logan? Was one of them the shooter? Did he realize that he’d hit him? Maybe he thought he’d killed him.

He could have killed Mrs. Payne, too. Hell, with as wildly as he’d been firing, he could have killed her. If Logan had ducked faster, the bullet that had hit him might have struck her instead. His reflexes had slowed at the wrong time for him, but the right time for her.

She shuddered but refused to give in to the fear that had paralyzed her at the cemetery. Anger was better; it made her stronger.

“Stacy!” Milek greeted her with a hug, his eyes bright with the sheen of inebriation. He was the lightweight of the family and could only handle a drink or two.

She slammed her palms into his chest, shoving him back with such force that he nearly fell over. But Garek, also standing at the bar, grabbed him and kept him upright.

“What the hell!” he protested.

“What the hell!” she yelled back at him. She didn’t care if she hurt their feelings now. She was so pissed over getting shot at that she actually understood Logan Payne intruding on her father’s funeral. “Which one of you idiots shot up the cemetery?”

“What?” Garek asked.

“I nearly got shot,” she said.

“What! Are you okay?” Milek asked, grabbing for her again.

She jerked back. “I’m fine.”

“It must have been Logan Payne,” Milek murmured. “He must have shot at you...” A look passed between him and his brother—a look of rage and revenge.

“No,” she said, in response to that look as much as her brother’s statement. “Logan Payne is the one who got shot!” As if they didn’t already know that...

“What’s going on?” Aunt Marta asked. “This is inappropriate talk for a funeral...” She sniffed her disdain of her husband’s niece and nephews. She had never approved of them because they were a convict’s children. Her own husband was a criminal but since he had never been caught, he wasn’t as unseemly as his brother and his offspring—mostly because of the lavish lifestyle his actions afforded her.

“Is Payne dead?” Milek asked.

Stacy’s stomach pitched as she remembered the blood on his tuxedo. She shook her head. “No.”

His mother had forced him to go to the hospital to make certain that the bullet had only grazed him as he’d claimed. Mrs. Payne had wanted Stacy to ride along—probably so that she could propose marriage between Stacy and her son again. Even if she talked Stacy into her outrageous plan, there was no way in hell that Logan would ever agree to become her husband—even if it were only pretend.

“That’s too bad,” Milek murmured with regret that Logan lived.

Had Milek been the shooter? Was that why he was drinking so heavily? Or was drinking his way of mourning their father?

Stacy wanted to mourn their father, too, but she’d hardly had the chance between Logan and the shooting. Before she could say anything else to her brothers, Aunt Marta grasped her arm and tugged her aside. Probably for another lecture on funereal etiquette.

“Why are you so angry with your brothers?” she asked.

Why was she so angry? Was it because if they were the shooters, they were risking prison again? Or was it because if they were the shooters, they were trying to kill Logan Payne?

She shook her head. “I’m not...”

“They are struggling with your father’s loss,” Aunt Marta said. “They didn’t get the chance to say goodbye that you got.”

“They could have stayed behind at the cemetery.” She suspected at least one of them probably had...

“At the prison,” Aunt Marta said. “The warden called you to see your father...”

She almost wished she had been spared seeing him like that, but he had asked for her. He had wanted to talk to her. She shuddered now as she remembered seeing him as she had, in so much pain, his life slipping away from him...

“What did he say to you?” her aunt asked.

Stacy tilted her head in confusion, uncertain that she’d heard the older woman correctly. They had never been close—at her aunt’s choosing. She was hardly going to share any secrets with the woman now. “Why do you care?”

“I’m just curious...”

The woman was too self-absorbed to be curious about anyone but herself. She only wanted to know about things that might affect her. Why did she think Stacy’s father’s last words might concern her?

Stacy had no intention of satisfying the woman’s morbid curiosity, so she turned away from her. But Aunt Marta grasped her arm in her talonlike fingers and asked again, “What did he say to you?”

The woman was persistent, or as Uncle Iwan would admit when he had too much to drink, a nag. She wasn’t going to give up until Stacy gave her an answer. Any answer might do...

So she shook her head. “I couldn’t understand him...”

Aunt Marta expelled a little breath—as if she were relieved. Had her brother-in-law taken one of her secrets to his grave?

Stacy had actually misled her aunt. She’d understood what her father had said, she just hadn’t understood why he’d said it. When he’d spoken them, Stacy had put no credence in her father’s last words. She’d blamed the strange statement on the painkillers they’d given him to make him comfortable because they hadn’t been able to do anything else to treat his injury.

She still didn’t understand why he’d said what he had...

“Son of a—!” Garek said as he turned toward the entrance to the pub’s back room.

Logan Payne walked in as if he’d been invited. But Garek had been right to stop himself from finishing his curse. Mrs. Payne was the sweetest woman Stacy had ever met—the most forgiving and generous woman—and probably one of the smartest, as well.

“I thought you got shot,” Milek drunkenly murmured. Had he thought that because of what Stacy had said or because he’d thought he’d hit him?

Logan probably wondered the same thing, because his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He gestured toward the tear in the shoulder of the tuxedo he still wore. It was even more rumpled and smudged with dirt and blood now. “The bullet barely grazed me,” he replied. Then, with a sneer that was somehow both infuriating and sexy as hell, he added, “Somebody’s a lousy shot.”

Garek chuckled. “Then it can’t be any one of us who’s shooting at you. We would have hit you by now.”

Despite her brother’s bravado, neither he nor Milek were expert marksmen. They weren’t killers, either, even though they had actually killed before. And if Logan kept goading them, they might kill again—right here.

Stacy had to do something to diffuse the potentially dangerous situation. It wouldn’t be just dangerous for Logan, who was outnumbered, it would be dangerous for her brothers, too, because if they hurt him—or worse—they would go back to prison.

“Why the hell do you keep showing up where you’re not wanted?” Aunt Marta demanded to know. This time her disdain was for the intruder. She usually considered her brother-in-law’s children intruders, too, even though they were blood.

“He’s wanted,” Stacy said suddenly. She’d realized what she had to do back at the cemetery, maybe even before the gunshots had rang out. But in this moment, she made the quick decision that she was actually going to go through with it. “I want him here...”

Curving her lips into a big smile, she crossed the room to where he stood. His long body was tense. His face tight, he looked stunned, as if he’d been shot again—and that was just from what she’d said. She had no idea how he would react to what she was about to do. Maybe he would stop her before she could even act, like he had when she’d tried to slap him. But he just stood there when she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Why hadn’t he stopped her? Why hadn’t he caught her arms and pushed her away? He stared down at her, his blue eyes intense and watchful as he waited for her next move.

Could she...?

Bracing herself for what she had to do, she drew in a deep breath. Then she rose up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his hard-looking lips. But they weren’t hard. They were surprisingly pliant and sensual and fuller than they looked in the tight line of disapproval into which they were usually drawn.

Now she was the one who was stunned—because he kissed her back. He clamped one arm, probably his uninjured one, around her back and pulled her tightly against him. Then he parted her lips and deepened the kiss.

Noise erupted in the room. Gasps. Shouts. Even a scream. But she could barely hear them for the blood rushing through her head, roaring in her ears. Her pulse pounded madly with adrenaline and attraction. Had it been so long since she’d been kissed that any man could affect her like this? It couldn’t be just because it was Logan. She couldn’t want a man that she hated as much as this one.

But no man had ever kissed her like he was kissing her—with so much passion and desire that her knees weakened and her head swam and she completely forgot why she’d kissed him in the first place.

When he pulled back, she was panting for breath. Against her lips, he murmured, “What the hell are you up to?”

For a moment she couldn’t remember. Then it came back to her—the plan, his mother’s outrageous plan.