family once, although it hadn’t been his choice. Abandoned as an infant by a teenage mom who left him in a school bathroom, he’d been adopted by an older couple. But like his young mother, they had also realized they weren’t really interested in being parents. So because he’d had this example, Dane had no idea what a family was actually supposed to be.
He hadn’t liked what he’d witnessed with the Paynes. They interfered in each other’s lives and even in the lives of the people who worked for them. They tried to bring everyone into this family of theirs. He suspected it was probably more like a cult, though. He shuddered just thinking of it. It wasn’t safe for him to stay.
But something had compelled him to stick around River City, Michigan, and the Payne Protection Agency.
Friendship.
That, he was very familiar and comfortable with. The guys from his unit were his best friends. Now his boss and coworkers. He hadn’t been able to leave them behind during a mission. And he couldn’t leave them now.
But he would just have to be very, very careful he didn’t wind up like Lars, the blond giant of a man who was sitting beside him in a Payne Protection Agency vehicle, holding a ring over the console. Dane was behind the wheel of the black SUV.
“So tell me—what do you think?” the guy eagerly asked him, his pale blue eyes bright with something almost like giddiness.
Dane sighed. “You know I love you, man, but only as a friend. I gotta turn you down.”
Lars swung his free hand into Dane’s shoulder. The tap probably would have knocked a smaller man through the driver’s door, but Dane was nearly as big as his friend. “I’m damn well not proposing to you.”
“Phewww,” Dane said. “You made me nervous. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”
Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve given that speech a few times.”
“So have you,” Dane reminded him.
Lars hadn’t been any more eager for romance or love than Dane was. In fact, with his sister missing, falling in love had been the last thing on Lars’s mind.
Until he started at Payne Protection.
The security agency might guard people’s lives but they were hell on hearts.
Lars glanced down at the ring he held out, and for a second the brightness of his eyes dimmed. “Do you think she’ll give me that speech?”
Dane’s stomach tightened into knots. He hated this stuff, hated seeing his friend so anxious. Lars had already suffered enough when his sister had gone missing and been presumed dead. It would be so much worse for him if he were to be turned down now by the woman he loved. “Maybe you should wait. You two haven’t been together very long. And Nikki has made it clear she wants nothing to do with marriage.”
“With weddings,” Lars corrected him. “She doesn’t want a wedding.”
“What the hell’s the difference?” he asked as he fumbled with the bow tie at his neck. That damn thing was cutting off his circulation.
Lars snapped the case closed on the ring and reached across to adjust Dane’s tie. “This. The monkey suits, the dresses, the pomp and ceremony—this is the wedding. It’s one day. The marriage is the life.”
“So you think she’s fine with the life and just wants to skip the day?” Dane hadn’t always been the greatest at math but one day seemed a hell of a lot easier to get through than a lifetime.
Lars sighed wistfully. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
Dane couldn’t blow smoke and offer his friend false assurances. He always had to tell the truth—unless he’d been sworn to keep someone else’s secret. “That’s a hell of a risk you’re taking.”
“Proposing?” Lars asked. “What’s the worst that can happen? She can say no.”
Dane figured it was a bigger risk if she said yes. But he just shrugged.
“And if I’m late to her mother’s wedding, she’s sure to say no,” Lars said as he shoved open the passenger’s door. “We better get inside the chapel.”
Dane stepped out of the driver’s side and walked around the truck, but he hesitated before heading up the steep steps to the double doors of the little white chapel. His heart pounded slowly and heavily with dread in a chest that felt constricted in that damn tuxedo.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. “I get why you are. You’re dating the bride’s daughter. But why was I told I needed to attend?”
It hadn’t been an invitation. It had been a command.
Lars stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back toward him. “You haven’t heard about what happened the last time the bride and groom were in this chapel together?”
Dane shook his head. Unlike Lars, he was trying to keep his distance from the Paynes. He didn’t want to be sucked into their little family cult. He wouldn’t have even been here if Cooper hadn’t made it an assignment.
“The whole wedding party was taken hostage and the groom was shot and nearly died.”
Dane shuddered. “Talk about bad luck. Shouldn’t they have taken that as an omen and forgotten about trying to get married again?”
“Woodrow Lynch wasn’t the groom that day. He was the father of the bride,” Lars explained. “He’s also a former FBI chief who’s made a lot of enemies over the course of his career.”
Dane glanced at the other people, all dressed up, heading into the church. Could one of them be a threat? “So he thinks there might be another attempt to kill him?” He studied the people more carefully, looking for not so carefully concealed weapons.
Lars gripped his shoulder and drew his attention back to him. “It’s possible. That’s why I wish Emilia wasn’t working today.”
Dane froze. “Emilia?”
“Yeah, she works for Penny Payne,” Lars said, pulling his hand away to gesture at the church Penny had converted into her full-service wedding planning venue. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
Dane had been trying to avoid any mention of Emilia. She had been the focus of his world for too many weeks when she’d been missing. That was why he’d been so fascinated with the photo Lars had given him to help find her. That was the only reason....
But why was his pulse quickening? Why could he feel his heart pounding faster and harder now?
“No...” Dane murmured but his reply wasn’t just for Lars. It was for himself. No.
He couldn’t see Emilia. He already saw her too much—every time he closed his damn eyes.
“She insisted on coming today,” Lars said, his voice gruff with frustration and concern. “She said it was the most important day for her boss and she wouldn’t miss it even though I tried to tell her it might not be safe.”
And
