I don’t want to spend my life with him.
“—as long as you both shall live?” The minister raised an expectant gaze to her, cuing her to respond.
“I do,” she rasped. Her answer seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well, a hollow, disembodied voice with its own will.
Brent squeezed her free hand and gave her a smile, which she dutifully mirrored, despite the legion of butterflies battering her stomach and the doubts shouting in her head.
She cast a quick glance to the front row where her mother joyfully dabbed her eyes and her father beamed at her triumphantly. Her parents’ happiness bolstered her courage.
“I’m so proud of you,” Neil Bancroft had whispered to Paige as he escorted her down the aisle moments ago. “Brent is your perfect match.”
She’d swallowed the bitter uncertainties that rose in her throat, wanting to reply, “No, he’s your perfect match. Don’t make me do this!” Instead, she’d forced a grin and nodded.
Marrying Brent was her destiny, her obligation. Marrying the man who would soon be the CEO of Bancroft Industries meant control of the family business would stay within the family. More important, she was making her father happy. Her father doted on Brent as if he were the son he never had.
Paige had long ago come to terms with the fact that her marriage was more a business merger than a love match. As the oldest daughter in the family, she knew her father expected her to put family obligations first. When Brent had proposed to her, with her father sitting across the table from them, she’d seen how the prospect of her marriage to his protégé had thrilled her father. Her engagement had earned her unprecedented praise and acceptance from her hard-to-please father.
A tug on her hand called her attention back to her groom, who was slipping an extravagant ring on her finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
Her heart tap-danced as she turned to hand her bouquet to her sister Holly and receive from her Brent’s ring.
Holly gave her a curious look, whispering discreetly, “You okay?”
Another fake smile and a tiny nod. “Of course.”
Paige shoved down the twinge of envy for her sister’s loving and happy marriage to a handsome doctor. Holly and Matt’s Christmas wedding last winter had been a small affair but bursting with heartfelt affection and joy.
Paige drew a deep, steadying breath as she faced her groom with his wedding band in hand and prepared to recite her vows. She could make this marriage work if she kept the right attitude and put aside her childish dreams of a fairy-tale prince to sweep her off her feet. The kind of romantic dreams her youngest sister, Zoey, was chasing.
“I can’t pretend I’m happy to see you marrying someone you don’t love,” Zoey had declared in the same phone call in which she explained her reasons for skipping Paige’s wedding. Not having Zoey at her wedding broke Paige’s heart, but her temperamental youngest sister had always been stubborn, opinionated and unpredictable. And so Zoey was God-knows-where with her latest loser boyfriend, protesting Paige’s practical decision by boycotting the wedding ceremony.
Brent might not be her dream love match, but he had his good qualities. He was thoughtful, intelligent, generous, polite and ambitious. He tried hard to make her happy—and he tried even harder to make her father happy. He was comfortable, like her favorite old pair of slippers.
With a mental kick in the pants, Paige shook off the doubt demons plaguing her and firmed her resolve. Zoey was wrong. Marrying Brent Scofield was the right thing to do. She’d be fine, and she’d learn to love him. She’d make her marriage work.
With shaking hands, she lifted the gold band to Brent’s finger. “With this ring, I—”
Slam!
The door at the back of the sanctuary crashed open, and Paige jerked her head toward the source of the distracting noise.
A man in a long trench coat strode down the center aisle toward the altar. “Sorry I’m late. But I didn’t want to show up too soon and give the groom a chance to escape.”
Brent snatched his hand from Paige’s and stiffened as he faced the intruder. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter. And you know what we want, Scofield.”
Jake McCall surreptitiously reached for the sidearm hidden at his hip under his tuxedo coat and stepped smoothly between the intruder and the groom. He’d been so caught up in deciphering the odd reluctance and anxiety in the bride’s expression that he’d allowed his vigilance over the groom’s safety to lapse for valuable seconds. He shoved down the self-recriminations that would only serve as further distractions and shifted into battle mode.
Even as Jake drew his SIG Sauer P226 and moved into a more offensive position, Brent shifted out from behind him, addressing the man in the trench coat. “And if I refuse?”
As if on cue, several more men, all armed with rifles, appeared in the balcony and stepped through the side and back doors of the sanctuary.
A murmur of distress whispered through the congregation, and the bridesmaids huddled together behind the altar rail.
Jake’s grip on his pistol tightened. Quickly, he began recalculating his best strategy to protect his client and avoid getting anyone else shot in the process. He sent a quick glance around the sanctuary, monitoring the other gunmen, then returned his attention to the ringleader. The man’s trench coat, out of place on a rain-free summer day, bothered Jake. Not knowing what might be under that long coat bothered him more.
Trench Coat sent Brent a gloating smirk and jerked a nod toward Jake. “I see you were expecting us.” Turning, he narrowed a menacing glare on Jake. “Drop it. Or my men will drop you and anyone else in the line of fire.”
Jake hesitated only a moment before setting his pistol on the floor and kicking it toward Trench Coat. Ordinarily, he’d keep his weapon at all costs, but being outnumbered and outgunned with so many civilians at risk changed everything.
“Now…” Trench Coat faced the groom once more. “If you give us what we want, nobody has to get hurt.”
“Brent? What is he talking about?” the bride asked, her expression stunned, terrified.
Matt Randall, who’d been introduced to Jake as the bride’s brother-in-law, rose from the front pew and eased up behind Trench Coat.
Jake tensed. Clearly, Matt had some form of well-intended, but ill-advised heroics in mind. He tried to make eye contact with Matt to warn him off, but Matt’s focus was on the man threatening the wedding party.
Just before Matt reached his target, Trench Coat jerked his head around and whipped open his coat to reveal the explosives he wore on his chest. He pulled his hand from his large coat pocket, his thumb hovering over the switch of a detonator. “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you, pal.”
The bridesmaids issued a collective gasp.
Brent raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Take it easy. Your business is with me. Leave everyone else out of it. Let everyone else go, and I—I’ll cooperate.”
Trench
