to forget the pain...
Penny tilted her head and stared up at him. “You’re the bodyguard the bride needs.”
Gage’s stomach lurched as realization suddenly dawned on him. And even without reading the program, he knew who the bride was. Penny had given him enough clues. He should have figured it out earlier. Hell, he should have figured it out when Penny asked him to help out at the chapel. He’d known she was planning a wedding for someone he’d known. Or at least, he’d thought he’d known her.
He guessed the wedding wasn’t all Penny Payne had been planning. Nick had warned him that she was a meddler. Her kids might not mind that she meddled in their lives, but he damn well minded.
He shook his head. “No...”
“Gage,” she beseeched him.
But he just shook his head again, refusing the assignment. He didn’t care if Mrs. Payne went to his boss and got him fired. He couldn’t protect this bride—not when he was the one against whom she most needed protecting.
* * *
“He’s gone,” Penny said.
Woodrow Lynch released a ragged breath and closed her office door behind him. “That’s probably for the best.”
“How can you say that?” Penny asked, her usually soft voice sharp with indignation. “She’s miserable.”
“She’s miserable because of him.” Anger coursed through him as he thought of the pain Gage Huxton had put his daughter through. Some of it had been inadvertent, like getting captured.
But the rest...
Quitting the Bureau.
Reenlisting.
Those had been Gage’s choices.
“Yes.” Penny stalked around her desk to stand in front of him. She was so petite despite the heels she wore with a silky bronze-colored dress. Her eyes were nearly that same color bronze. Her hair, chin length and curly, was a deeper shade of brown with red and bronze highlights. She was beautiful. She was also infuriating as hell. The woman always thought she was right.
And even more infuriating was the fact that she usually was.
“So, it’s for the best that she move on,” Woodrow said.
It had to be for the best, because the wedding was due to start in less than an hour. And he would rather walk his daughter down the aisle to a man who would not make her miserable.
Penny shook her head and tumbled several locks of hair into her eyes. The curls tangled in her long lashes. Instinctively, he reached out to extract them, but her hand collided with his. Her skin was as silky as her hair. Her fingers trembled beneath his, and she pulled away from his touch and stepped back until his hand fell away from her face.
He’d known her long enough—had attended enough weddings in her chapel—that he’d seen how warm and affectionate she was. With everyone else...
With him she was guarded and skittish. Usually. Right now she was also annoyed.
“Megan can’t move on,” Penny said, “unless she has closure.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question. It had just slipped out, probably because he’d wondered for a while why she had never remarried after her husband died sixteen years before.
Her big eyes narrowed. “We are not talking about me.”
She never did. He’d noticed that, too. She only talked about other people: her kids, his agents and now his daughter.
“Our concern should be only about Megan,” Penny continued. “I’ve never worked with a more miserable bride.”
Now he narrowed his eyes with indignation and pride. “Are you saying that she’s difficult?”
“Of course not,” Penny said. She reached out, almost as if she couldn’t help herself, and touched his arm. She probably only meant to reassure him about his daughter. But then she added, “She’s sad. So sad...”
He shouldn’t have been able to feel Penny’s touch, not through his tuxedo jacket and shirt, but his skin tingled as if he’d felt the heat and silkiness of her skin against his. What the hell was wrong with him?
Maybe he’d been single too long. Like her, he’d lost his spouse. She had died, more than twenty years ago, when their girls were little. But he didn’t need closure—or anything else—but his daughters’ happiness. Ellen was older and settled with a good husband and three beautiful little girls.
But Megan...
He’d always worried the most about Megan and never more than when she got involved with Gage Huxton. She’d fallen so hard for him that it was inevitable she would get hurt.
“She’s marrying a good man,” Woodrow insisted. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he’d used Bureau resources to check out the kid. He was a computer nerd—as introverted and shy as she was. “They’re perfect for each other.”
They’d met in college, in a computer class. They’d been friends for years before they’d started dating. They hadn’t been going out very long before Gage had swept her off her feet.
Damn Gage...
Penny shook her head.
“They are perfect for each other,” he insisted.
“It doesn’t matter how compatible you are,” she said, “if you’re not in love.”
“Love is what made her miserable,” Woodrow said. He could relate to that. Love had made him miserable as well. “Compatibility is more important in a marriage—wanting and expecting the same things. That’s what will sustain a relationship.” And not send one outside the marriage looking for something else.
“Are you speaking from experience now?” she asked.
He wished. He shook his head. “We’re not talking about me.”
“No,” she agreed. “Megan, and her happiness, is our only priority. You need to tell her that Gage is alive.”
“Why?” he asked.
Nothing good would come of her knowing the truth; it wouldn’t change anything. She and Gage had broken up nearly a year ago—before he’d quit the Bureau, before he’d reenlisted, before he’d gone missing in action.
Penny’s grasp on his arm tightened. Her hand was small but strong. He felt her grip and the heat of her touch. “She deserves to know before she marries another man that the man she really loves is alive.”
He hadn’t seen Gage yet. But Woodrow’s former agent and Gage’s best friend, Nicholas Rus, had warned him. Gage had come back alive, but he hadn’t come back the same.
Woodrow shook his head. “No, the man she loves is gone.” And maybe it was better that she never learned the truth.
