ONE
Taking Care of Business
Stephanie Bond
CHAPTER ONE
FBI SPECIAL AGENT Steve Berringer sat in a loaner SUV studying the Taking Care of Business wedding chapel, a fireball of apprehension in his stomach. He’d walked into some of the most seedy bars, basements, betting parlors and brothels in Las Vegas with his weapon drawn and expecting the worst, but none of those places had put a sweat on the back of his neck like this innocent-looking little white building across the parking lot with pink and yellow flowers on either side of its covered entrance.
Maybe it was the August heat, he reasoned, glancing up through the windshield at the afternoon sun from behind his polarized shades. But a cool breeze was blowing today, making the cute little trees in front of the chapel sway in the most depressingly precious way. Plus he had the air conditioner on full blast.
Steve rubbed his hand over his painful midsection. In thirty-four years, this was the closest he’d ever come to the whole marriage process. He’d never even seen a wedding. He had ducked countless requests to be a groomsman, had RSVP’d with regrets to every invitation he’d received, had sidestepped requests from girlfriends to attend weddings as an escort. To a commitment-phobic guy like him, a wedding chapel was the ultimate nightmare. Churches, after all, could be used for other things: religious services, christenings, funerals. But a wedding chapel—man, that was hard core.
The phone on his belt rang and he checked it. Karen, his partner. He flipped up the receiver with a grunt. “What’s up?”
“Just calling to give you a pep talk.”
He frowned. “That’s not necessary.”
“I saw you pop an antacid before you left—are you sure you’re up to this undercover assignment? I mean, I know how you get when someone mentions the ‘M’ word.”
He poked his tongue into his cheek. “You know I’d do anything to nab Lundy. This time he’s not getting away.”
“But our informant said it could be a week before Lundy shows up there with his child-bride-to-be. It’s hard to say how many weddings you’ll have to video, how many vows you’ll have to witness, how many garters you might accidentally catch.”
“Are you through being funny?”
She laughed, then sighed. “Actually, I wish I was with you, partner—hanging out at an Elvis wedding parlor sounds like more fun than pulling desk duty.”
“That’s what you get for being pregnant.” Karen was expecting her first child with her husband Daniel, and the last few weeks were wearing on her. To be honest, Steve was relieved to have her tucked away where it was safe. He expected this undercover operation to end smoothly, with Mitch Lundy being apprehended quietly after he exited the chapel as an unsuspecting married man, but the fewer people—especially pregnant ones—on the scene, the better.
“I know,” Karen said. “But I’d give anything to watch you squirm being around all those men saying ‘I do.’”
“Did you need something?” he snapped.
“Not as badly as you do,” she sang.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Bye.”
Steve closed the phone and clipped it back onto his belt, then dabbed his neck with his handkerchief. God deliver him from smart-alecky females. He’d rather deal with a hard-nosed criminal any day—they were more predictable.
Heaving a sigh, he turned off the engine and lifted his camera bag from the passenger seat. Who knew that his long-neglected hobby would come in handy on a work assignment? And taking photos of the chapel would be the perfect foil for making sure Lundy was covered from every angle.
As he strode toward the chapel, he noticed the abundance of neon on the sign and the building itself—in the daylight, the little white chapel looked out of place on the garish Las Vegas strip, but after sundown, this place would probably outshine its flashy neighbors.
It was a one-story building, narrow along the street front, but deep. Cordelia Conroy was the owner of the place, early sixties, a former showgirl who once had ties to the mob. She owed the FBI a favor for helping her out of a jam years ago, so she’d agreed to let Steve come in undercover as an employee to keep an eye out for Lundy, on condition that the arrest wouldn’t take place at the chapel and that her employees wouldn’t be in danger. In return, the FBI had demanded confidentiality—none of the regular employees could know Steve’s real identity or why he was there.
So, dressed in casual clothes, having purposefully missed his regular haircut last week and sporting two days’ worth of beard, he would be Steve Mulcahy, scruffy photographer. If the undercover position were in any other place, he might actually be happy for some downtime, but being surrounded by flowers and music and gushing couples—damn. Not counting the oddballs he’d likely be working with in an Elvis wedding chapel. Steve tucked his sunglasses into his shirt pocket, then inhaled and opened the front door. He was looking forward to cuffing Lundy, but this would definitely go down as his worst assignment ever.
He stepped inside a foyer of sorts, immediately enveloped by the strains of “Love Me Tender” floating from mounted speakers. Spin-racks of postcards and Elvis Presley memorabilia occupied every available space, leaving a narrow path to a counter surrounded by poster-sized menus of wedding packages and bulletin boards full of photos of happy couples.
The willowy woman standing behind the counter glanced up, her violet-colored eyes wide, her pink lips open in a welcoming smile. Her hair was platinum-blond and short, sticking up at spiky angles. Her unusual pixie beauty hit him like a punch to the chest, and he suddenly was feeling a little better about the um…the um…
Oh yeah—the assignment.
Steve took a step forward, tripped over something solid and went down hard. The hidden gun in his waist holster stabbed into his diaphragm, driving all the air from his lungs.
The blonde gasped and ran around the counter to where he fell. “H.D., are you okay?”
Steve rolled over onto his back and panted for air. “My…name…isn’t…H.D.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
She knelt and pulled the wrinkly face of the world’s fattest basset hound close to hers until their noses touched. “Are
