suspected not all of it had been good. She’d been married there. He wasn’t sure if that had been a good or bad union.
“There are other hiding places,” she said. “And a secret passageway that leads to the little courtyard out back.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You can leave that way.” But were there other armed gunmen outside? Would they see her if she escaped that way?
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”
“We need backup,” he reminded her. “And since you’re not the one jamming the signals, someone else is.” Someone who’d planned to cut off communication to the church.
She turned back toward her desk and opened a bottom drawer. “I have a landline, too,” she told him.
He was surprised. Smartphones were more useful, especially for businesses.
She had an old-school kind, the console with the cord attaching the receiver to it. No wonder she put it in a drawer, so it didn’t take up too much of the surface of her whitewashed oak desk. When she put the receiver to her ear, her brow furrowed. “There’s no dial tone.”
That didn’t surprise him. If the gunmen had gone to the trouble of jamming the cell signals, they would have made certain to cut the landline, too. And they probably had reinforcements stationed outside. He couldn’t send her out alone to the courtyard.
He needed reinforcements of his own.
Penny’s eyes widened—looking even bigger and darker—as her face paled. And the woman who usually had all the answers asked, “What are we going to do?”
Something shifted in Woodrow’s chest, squeezing his heart. He reached for her—intending to offer her only comfort from the fear gripping her. But her lips parted on a soft gasp, and he had the sudden urge to taste them.
To taste her...
Before he could lower his head to hers, the doorknob rattled. Someone had found them. Would he have time to draw his weapon and protect them?
Frustration knotted Gage’s stomach muscles. The damn little buttons were driving him crazy. His fingers were too big to grasp them, let alone push them through the little loops wrapped tightly around them. The edge of the glass or crystal was sharp, scraping his fingertips. He glanced at the scissors she’d set on the vanity table.
“I should cut it off,” he said.
“You should,” she eagerly agreed.
But he liked Nikki’s plan to change places with the bride. Hell, maybe he just liked it because Megan would no longer be the bride. He shouldn’t care that she was going to marry another man. While he’d once considered asking her to marry him, he never would again. She’d said she hadn’t loved the man he’d been. She certainly wouldn’t love the one he had become. “We can’t.”
He’d been at it for long moments and had only undone one button. They were spaced so closely together that even with the couple that Nikki had undone, only a little more than an inch of Megan’s skin was visible through the slight opening.
Megan was never comfortable showing much skin. She always dressed in layers. Skirts with tights beneath and tall boots. Blouses buttoned to her throat with sweaters over them. She dressed like the librarian she was. For some reason Gage had found that super sexy. Just like he’d always taken his time unwrapping presents, to draw out the anticipation and excitement, he’d taken his time getting Megan out of her clothes.
He’d toyed with the zippers on her boots before lowering them and pulling them off her curvy calves. He’d taken his time with the buttons on her cardigan sweaters and on her blouses beneath them. Even with the layers, she’d never had as many buttons as this, though.
And at least then his efforts had been rewarded. He’d been able to stroke and taste all that honey-colored skin he’d exposed. He’d been able to elicit soft moans and cries from her as she’d pressed her hot, naked body against his.
Remembering the sensations—the heat, the tension, the pleasure—had a groan slipping from his throat.
“Use the scissors,” she told him.
But his frustration wasn’t with the buttons. It was with the fact that even if he managed to undo all those buttons, he wouldn’t be able to kiss and touch the skin he exposed. She wasn’t his anymore.
She’d never really been his, because she’d never trusted him. She’d never trusted what they’d had. Or she wouldn’t have accused of him using her.
“I can’t...” he said.
She tilted her head and peered over her shoulder at him. “Can’t cut it off?”
He couldn’t keep thinking about what they’d had, what they’d done to each other. How he hadn’t ever been able to get enough of her.
Heat rushed through him, making his blood warm, his skin tingle. He’d bared less than an inch of her silky skin, but he wanted her as obsessively as he’d always wanted her.
Maybe it was her shyness that had appealed to him the first time they’d met. When her father had introduced them, she hadn’t met his gaze, and she’d ignored his outstretched hand, hers shoved deep into the pockets of her skirt. Used to women seeking his attention, flirting with him, he’d been intrigued by the novelty of Megan Lynch. She’d challenged him.
And Gage had never been able to walk away from a challenge...until the end. Until he’d realized there was no way he would ever win her trust or her heart.
He just shook his head.
And her face paled. “You’re giving up again?”
“Again?” he asked. “When did I give up before?”
Unless she was talking about them. But she’d given him no choice then.
Now color flushed her face. “You quit the Bureau.”
After they’d broken up, he hadn’t been able to work for her father. Not only would it have been awkward but it would have killed his pride. He’d learned what everyone thought of him—that he was doing the boss’s daughter in order to get ahead. Megan had believed those vicious rumors. So maybe that was another reason he’d quit, to prove her wrong.
“I had my reasons,” he reminded her.
She jerked her chin up and down in a nervous nod. “I thought it was my fault. The reason you quit, the reason you reenlisted, the reason you...” Her voice cracked, cutting off whatever she’d been about to add.
“The reason I what?”
“Got killed,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”
And she’d blamed herself. He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He’d blamed her, too. Getting mad at her had eased some of his pain.
“I
