this isn’t what it looks like,” the twin replied.
“It looks like a crime scene,” Cooper said. Yellow tape cordoned off the groom’s quarters that police techs had photographed and processed for prints and whatever other evidence they’d found. “There’s a lot of blood. The signs of a struggle. It’s obvious somebody was dragged down the aisle.”
That was why the runner had been bunched. Like the walls of the groom’s quarters, it had also been stained with blood. While she’d been in the bride’s room, someone had attacked her groom and dragged him from the church. How hadn’t she or Mrs. Payne heard any of the struggle?
Tanya had been in the bride’s room, deciding that she did not want to be a bride. Mrs. Payne had been downstairs in her office talking with the reverend. Unable to have a rehearsal without a groom, the minister had left after talking to the police.
“What the hell did you do?” the maid of honor, Tanya’s sister, shouted. She ran down the aisle toward the front of the church where Tanya sat in the pew near where the Payne brothers stood. But Rochelle didn’t make it very far before she tripped over the rumpled runner.
Tanya’s only other bridesmaid, who was also Cooper’s sister, rushed up behind her and helped her to her unsteady feet. “Rochelle, let me get you some more coffee...”
“I don’t need coffee!” Tanya’s little sister shouted, her words only slightly slurred. “I need to know what she did with Stephen!”
“What I did with him?” Tanya asked. She set the teacup on the pew and rose up to meet her sister as Rochelle finally made it down the aisle.
“You don’t care about him at all,” Rochelle accused. “You’ve just been using him to get Grandfather’s money. That’s all you care about!” She vaulted herself at Tanya, knocking her to the ground.
The shock finally wore off—leaving Tanya able to register the pain. She felt the hardness of the floor beneath her back and the weight of her sister, who, despite the fact she was younger, was quite a bit taller and heavier. She could barely breathe with her on top of her. And she felt the sharp sting of her sister’s slap. She had no right to fight back—not when everything Rochelle said was probably true.
But this was not the time or the place for Rochelle to throw one of her temper tantrums. Tanya had been trying to hold herself together for so long that she finally snapped under the emotional and physical pressure. “Grow up, you brat,” she yelled. Using probably more strength than necessary, she shoved her sister back.
Rochelle didn’t stay off. As Tanya stood up, her sister launched herself at her again. But this time strong hands caught Tanya before she hit the ground. With an arm wrapped around her waist, Cooper lifted her nearly off her feet.
The other bridesmaid, Nikki Payne, caught Rochelle, and tried to control her swinging hands and flailing feet. For her efforts, she took a hit to her face.
“Whatever happened to Stephen is your fault,” Rochelle accused. “It’s all your fault!”
Another stinging blow connected, bringing tears to Tanya’s eyes. But the tears weren’t from physical pain. Rochelle’s verbal assault had hit her harder than her slap. Because she was right.
Whatever had happened to Stephen was all Tanya’s fault. She literally had his blood on her hands.
“Aren’t you glad you had brothers?” Cooper asked his sister as she rubbed her fingertips along the scratch on her cheek and winced. Nikki had somehow subdued her friend while Cooper had carried Tanya out of her reach. When Rochelle had been swinging, Tanya had barely defended herself from her younger sister’s attack. Maybe she was in shock over having found Stephen’s blood in the groom’s quarters.
“Yeah,” Nikki agreed. “You guys just punched each other. It was more civilized.”
“We never punched you,” he said.
“No,” she agreed with a heavy sigh, almost as if she was disappointed that they hadn’t. As the youngest and the only girl with three older brothers, she had often been left out of their roughhousing because they hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
Tanya and her sister didn’t have that relationship. Rochelle had definitely wanted to hurt her. How badly, though?
He could understand Rochelle being resentful of her sister. Tanya was far more beautiful—with more delicate features and blonder hair and a thinner figure than her sister. But how deep was that resentment?
“Why’d you bring her here?” Cooper asked. At least he hoped Nikki had been the driver.
“She’s Tanya’s maid of honor,” she replied. “I’ve been looking for her all night to make sure she got to the rehearsal.”
“Mom put you to work, too?”
She sighed. “Enlisted me as part of the wedding party. I think she suspected there’d be a problem with Rochelle, and she and I have known each other since high school.”
“You did subdue her.” So much so that the woman sat quietly in a pew now, tears streaming down her flushed face. She seemed more distraught over the groom’s disappearance than the bride was.
“Please point that out to Logan,” Nikki beseeched him. Their eldest brother was on the other side of the heavy oak doors, talking on his cell phone in the vestibule. She shot him a glare through the windows at the back of the chapel. “He keeps me tied to a desk. He refuses to let me do an actual physical protection assignment.”
Cooper bit his tongue before he verbally agreed with Logan. Nikki was so petite and fragile looking—just like their mother with her copper-colored hair and big brown eyes. But she had handled herself remarkably well with the taller and heavier Chesterfield sister. He touched her scratched cheek, making her wince again.
“Hey, I didn’t want to hurt her,” Nikki explained. “Or I would have taken her down faster. She’s a friend, though...” Then she reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry about Stephen. Do you have any idea what happened?”
“We don’t know anything for certain. There’s a hell of a lot of blood in the groom’s quarters. But until the crime lab does a DNA test, we don’t even know for certain that it’s his.” Except if it wasn’t, where the hell was he, then? If there wasn’t all that blood, Cooper might have believed his friend had just gotten a case of cold feet. He might have believed that if Stephen was marrying any woman but Tanya.
“Mom confirmed he was the only one in the room,” Nikki said.
“Where was his best man?” Cooper asked.
Nikki lifted a reddish brow. “Where was he?” she asked, obviously referring to him.
“I told him I couldn’t do it,” Cooper reminded his little sister.
“Why not?”
“Why?” Cooper asked. “Why did he even ask me? We haven’t seen each other in years.”
“He showed up at the house to see you every time you were home on leave,” Nikki said. “He stayed in touch.”
But they’d both been busy. The letters few and far between and Cooper’s
