Explosive Engagement (9 page)

“What is he risking?” Stacy asked. She felt as if she were the one risking everything—alienating her family, making an enemy in the woman who had a crush on Logan and falling for her fake fiancé herself. If it were up to her, she would have preferred to stay with Mrs. Payne than alone with her oldest son.

“He’s risking his playboy status.” Logan waved at his brother’s SUV as the man drove away. Then he pressed his hand to the small of Stacy’s back and guided her toward his own vehicle. As his brother had for the bodyguard, Logan opened the door for Stacy.

She climbed into the passenger’s seat and asked, “Do you think your mom will talk Parker into a fake engagement, too?”

Logan laughed now. “I don’t think even Mom could ever maneuver Parker to the altar.” He closed her door and walked around to the driver’s side.

Stacy felt as if
she
was the one who’d been maneuvered...into once again being alone with Logan Payne. After he and Cujo jumped inside the SUV, she remarked, “We could have stayed with her.”

His handsome face pulled into a tight mask of disapproval. “And put her in the cross fire—again—of whoever’s shooting at us?”

“No. Of course not,” she said. “I would never want her getting hurt because of me. But you probably think that I have already hurt her...”

He tensed with obvious concern for his mother’s safety. “How?”

Stacy paused, surprised that he hadn’t immediately agreed with her. “Because of what you think my dad did.”

“I
know
that your dad did it,” he said, his tension easing only slightly. He turned the key in the ignition, starting up the SUV. “
You
didn’t do it. I don’t blame you.”

Maybe she hadn’t heard him correctly over the rumble of the engine. “Yeah, right. You have definitely blamed me and my brothers.”

He groaned. “I haven’t blamed you for what your dad did. I’ve blamed you for refusing to admit what he did.”

She still refused. “That’s because he didn’t do it,” she insisted. “He never would have pulled the trigger.”

“They struggled over the gun.”

“He wouldn’t have reached for it,” she insisted. “My father hates—” a twinge of pain struck her heart as she realized she had to correct herself and use past tense “—hated guns. He never would have touched it.”

“It was just the two of them in that room,” Logan said. “What do you think happened? How did my father wind up dead and yours not?”

She pointed out what had always been so obvious to her. “There was someone else in that room.”

“Officer Cooper didn’t see anyone else leaving it,” Logan said.

“He wasn’t there yet,” she said. She had memorized the officer’s testimony, and despite fifteen years having passed since the trial, she hadn’t forgotten a word. “Your father got to the room first. His partner was slower—too slow to see who really shot your father.”

A muscle twitched in Logan’s cheek as he turned away from her, his focus on his driving as he steered around the crime scene and police vehicles parked in his driveway. “Your father never said that there was someone else in the room.”

Her father had never said anything about what had happened that horrible night. He had chosen to not even testify at his own trial. “I know he wouldn’t have done it.”

“Then why not tell the police who did?” Logan asked. “He had to have witnessed it.”

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t tell...” Tension throbbed behind her eyes, so she squeezed them shut to relieve some pressure of trying to convince Logan her father was innocent. Why was she even wasting her time? She’d had fifteen years to convince him and had failed. She knew she would never really get through to him. “I don’t know...”

Instead of laughing at her or calling her naive as she’d suspected he would, Logan offered an explanation. “Maybe he was protecting someone.”

Hope rushed through her, and she opened her eyes to stare at him in shock. “You believe me? You believe my father was innocent?”

He shook his head and dashed her hopes.

If he kept blaming her dad for his father’s death, there was no future for them. That anger and resentment would always remain between them.

Her breath caught with more shock that she had actually hoped there might be a future for them. Had she become such a good actress that she’d convinced herself their engagement could be real?

“I don’t know what to believe,” he admitted.

“About my father?” He had given her doubts about her brothers; it was only fair that she gave him doubts, too.

“About you,” he said. “I thought you were responsible for the attempts on my life, that you’d put your brothers up to it...”

His suspicions chilling her, she shivered. She had been a fool to think there would ever be a future between them. He didn’t think the worst of just her family; he thought it of her, too. He always had and that hadn’t changed.

Only her feelings had begun to change...

But maybe it was just gratitude that she felt for him since he had saved her life. Twice. But even before that she’d begun to think a little differently about Logan Payne...because of her father’s cryptic last words.

“I’ve been told you’ve done it before,” Logan said. “That you’ve had your brothers kill for you.”

Given the way he’d phrased it, she had a pretty good idea who had told him. The jealous female bodyguard might have bent the truth, but she hadn’t outright lied.

So Stacy admitted it. “They have killed for me.”

Chapter Nine

Logan hadn’t expected her to freely admit it—not when she clung so stubbornly to the illusion of her father’s innocence. Stunned by her admission, he’d driven in silence to his brother’s house.

“Is this it?” she asked doubtfully as he pulled up to the traditional two-story brick Colonial. “This doesn’t look like a place your brother would live...”

“He claims he won it in a poker game,” Logan said with a slight chuckle. He suspected his brother used the four-bedroom house to lure women into thinking that he might secretly want a wife and kids someday. But he doubted the playboy Payne would ever wed—no matter how much Mom tried to coerce him into getting married.

She shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder how well we really know our families...”

If she hadn’t had doubts about her brothers, she wouldn’t have acted on his mother’s marriage suggestion. But hearing her actually admit it had disappointment causing a twinge of pain in his chest. Even while her blind devotion to her father had frustrated him, he’d also admired her loyalty to her family.

“No,” she said, as if realizing he’d misconstrued her comments. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You weren’t talking about your brothers?”

Silence was her telling reply.

“You told me earlier that they killed for you before,” he reminded her. And he’d been so stunned that he hadn’t uttered a single word the entire drive to Parker’s house.

Her body bristling with defensiveness, she replied, “I didn’t tell them to—”

“But they killed for you.”

“To protect me,” she said.

He tensed now. “Protect you? Has someone tried to kill you before?”

Her teeth sank so deeply into her bottom lip that she probably almost drew blood, and she shook her head.

So they hadn’t killed in order to save her life. What other excuse was there for taking a life? “What were they protecting you from, then?”

She shuddered with such revulsion and horror that he regretted ever bringing up what had obviously been a painful experience for her. As if sensing her pain and feeling it, too, the dog whined and rubbed his head against hers, tousling her streaky blond-brown hair.

“Stacy...” He was going to tell her that she didn’t have to tell him, that he didn’t need to know. But he realized that he did—that he suddenly needed to know everything there was to know about his fake fiancée.

She drew in a shuddery breath, as if bracing herself, before she continued. “When my father went to prison, we had to go live with my mother again and my—my stepfather.”

Outrage coursed through Logan as realization dawned. “Did he...”

She shook her head. “He was trying to...but my brothers broke down the bedroom door. They saved me...but our stepfather died.”

If Logan had been the one to break down that door, the bastard wouldn’t have survived his wrath, either. For once he respected her brothers. “Which one did it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I blacked out. And when I woke up, they were both hurt badly and he was dead.”

“They never told you?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter which one of them did it. They both saved me, and they both went to jail for it.”

And knowing that cemented Logan’s certainty that they would never risk hurting her—not even to protect themselves. They might be trying to kill him, but someone else was trying to kill her. “But if they were both badly beaten, they shouldn’t have been charged with anything. It was self-defense.”

It had at least been defense—of their sister.

She nodded. “It should have been, but my mother testified otherwise.”

“She testified against her own children?” Now he was the one horrified. His mother would have killed the man herself if he’d ever tried to touch one of her children.

“She said that I told them to do it.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Because I was mad that he rejected my advances.”

That must have been the twisted story that Candace had learned.

“The jury convicted them of manslaughter,” she said, “but the judge believed me over her and gave them light sentences. Milek went to juvenile detention and Garek a minimum security prison for six months.”

Neither of those were easy stints. But the jury had convicted them and the judge had probably sentenced them because they’d had previous offenses for stealing, like their father. Could either of them have been with him that night?

But Logan wasn’t thinking about that night now. He was thinking about Stacy. “And what about you?” he asked. “Where did you go?”

“I wasn’t charged with anything,” she said.

“But where did you go?” he asked. “You couldn’t have kept living with your mother.”

She shuddered again. “No. She signed off her parental rights the day my stepfather died.”

“Were you still just fourteen, like you’d been during your father’s trial?”

She nodded.

“So you went into the system?”

Her lips curved into a wistful smile. “That might have been better. Because my father asked him, Uncle Iwan let me live with him. But his wife wasn’t very gracious about it.”

Logan shivered as he remembered the older woman’s icy demeanor. “She doesn’t seem like the motherly type.”

“No. But until I met your mother, I really had no idea what motherly is supposed to be.”

She’d obviously had a horrible example of motherhood.

“Your mother is great,” she said with more of that wistfulness.

He sighed and agreed, “Yes, she is.”

She drove him crazy much of the time—because of her generosity and forgiveness and, most of all, her meddling. But her heart was always in the right place; sometimes it was just too damn big.

Except this time.

He finally understood why his mother had taken such an interest in the daughter of her husband’s killer. And he loved her even more for it. His mother. Not Stacy. He didn’t love her. But he didn’t hate her anymore, either.

“She’s great,” Stacy repeated. “But she’s wrong about the two of us.”

Remembering the taste and sensation of Stacy’s lips beneath his, Logan’s pulse quickened with awareness and attraction and he wasn’t so certain that his mother wasn’t right about them.

“Her plan isn’t working,” Stacy continued. “Since our
engagement,
we’ve nearly been blown up and shot. You really should just take me home. ATF must have cleared my place by now. The building isn’t even that big.”

The building. “Could the bomb have been meant for the landlord? Maybe someone mistook him for living above the store?”

“The landlord does live above the store,” she replied.

He tensed. “You don’t live alone?”

“No. I don’t.”

He’d really misunderstood the situation with her. He’d thought she was as single as he was. But he wasn’t just confused. He was disappointed. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? The bomb could have been meant for your...
roommate.
”

“My roommate has no enemies.” She patted the dog’s head. “Cujo is my roommate.”

What kind of game was she playing with him? “He’s damn well not your landlord, though.”

She giggled.

The realization dawned on him. “You own the building,” he said.

She nodded. “Me and the bank. Given the property values in that neighborhood, I’m not sure which of us owns more, though.”

“And the jewelry store? A tenant?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s mine. I design and sell my own jewelry.”

That explained the calluses on her hands since she worked with metal and tools and stones. He could have said something about the irony she’d brought up earlier—not only did the daughter of a jewelry thief live above a jewelry store, she owned the jewelry store. But he saw more significance than irony in the situation. “So the bomb could only have been meant for you.”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know why. I have even fewer enemies than Cujo.”

“What about your mother?” Any woman who would testify against her own children...

“She wouldn’t have waited fifteen years to exact her revenge,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “And she moved on a long time ago and has been married twice since my stepfather died.” Her face flushed as if she was embarrassed over her mother’s behavior. But she’d felt no shame over her father...

“Now you know why I’m still single,” she said.

He wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened with her stepfather or because of her mother’s multimarriages. But he nodded.

“You know all my secrets,” she said.

“I doubt that.”

“You know there’s no reason for anyone to want me dead.”

“Maybe there’s no reason,” he allowed. “But someone still wants you dead. Or they damn well wouldn’t have planted a bomb in your apartment.” He got out the driver’s side and walked around the hood to open her door. “So we’re staying here tonight.”

The sun had dropped low in the sky, the last rays of it shimmering across the asphalt of Parker’s street.

“Do you want me to carry you inside again?” he asked. Part of him hoped she did. He liked carrying her, liked the slight weight of her curvy body in his arms, her head on his shoulder...

“No.” She sighed and stepped down from the SUV. “It is getting kind of late to go back to my place.”

“And yours isn’t the safest neighborhood in the daylight,” he said. But he didn’t intend to let her go home in the morning, either. He didn’t intend to let her out of his sight until he figured out who was trying to kill her.

Cujo jumped down from the SUV and followed closely behind his mistress. The dog knew that she was in danger. If only Stacy realized it, too...

* * *

S
HE
WAS
IN
DANGER
.
More danger than she’d ever been in before, and she’d had some close calls both in the past and recently. But then her life had been in danger.

Now she was worried about her heart. Why had she told Logan so much about herself? Why had she shared more with him than she ever had with anyone else?

It wasn’t as if he was really her fiancé.

He was actually the only enemy she had. But if he was trying to kill her, why did he keep saving her?

In the dim light from the street, he fumbled with Parker’s keys before unlocking the door. Cujo pushed past him and crossed the threshold, sniffing his way across the hardwood floor of the living room. Then he bounded up the stairs.

His behavior reminded Stacy of the way he’d acted at her apartment. Her pulse quickened with another kind of fear. “What’s he doing?”

The dog’s footsteps scratched across the hardwood floors overhead. Logan sighed. “Probably tracking a woman to Parker’s bed.”

“I’m guessing there’ve been several,” she mused. Was he just following the old scents?

“And several have come back to wait for him.”

The dog barked.

“There’s a woman in his bed now?” she asked.

“Probably...” But Logan reached for his gun, as if concerned that it might be another kind of threat.

“But the door was locked.”

“I’m not the only one he’s given his key to,” Logan replied. “Usually he gets them back, but sometimes someone makes a copy.”

The barking intensified and so did Stacy’s fear. “Then he should change his damn locks.”

Logan grunted in agreement as he headed toward the stairs. Stacy followed, but he shook his head. “Stay here.”

She shook hers in response. She wanted to see what kind of woman would let herself into a man’s house and crawl into his bed. And why did an image of herself lying naked in Logan’s bed flash through her mind?

Could she be that kind of woman? For him, she was afraid that she could become that desperate, that needy...

She shuddered in apprehension.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Logan said. “Nobody knows we’re staying here tonight.”

That wasn’t true. Parker knew. And more perilously, that jealous Amazon knew.

Could that be who waited in Parker’s bed...but for Logan?

She paused midstep, not certain she wanted to see this. But then Cujo growled.

Logan could probably call him off; the dog had recognized him as the alpha male and his master. But Cujo had belonged to Stacy longer. So she continued up the stairs behind Logan.

He moved stealthily down the hall. Stacy tried but, despite being smaller and lighter, she couldn’t make her footsteps as quiet as his. The man could have been a jewel thief himself. But he was all about law and order.

And security.

As her father and her brothers had discovered, there was no security in stealing. While her brothers crimes had led to jail time, her father’s had led to his death. But then Logan’s dad, who’d been all about law and order, too, had also died.

Panic clutched her heart as he stepped through a doorway. His shadow fell back into the hall—dark and foreboding. Had he stepped into a trap?

“Get out of here!” he yelled.

And he wasn’t talking to some naked woman in Parker’s bed. He was talking to her as she joined him inside the room. While the traditional-looking family home had been misleading about Parker’s personality, the bedroom was not. The four-poster king-sized bed and its black satin sheets dominated the space. A black-framed mirror adorned the wall across from the bed and another mirror adorned the ceiling above it.

Maybe that was why Cujo had been barking. Like cats and squirrels and rabbits, he didn’t like other dogs, either. Probably because he considered himself a cop instead of a canine.

But Cujo wasn’t looking into the mirrors. He was crouched under the bed, growling.

Was the woman under there? Because there was no one in the perfectly made bed.

Logan was crouched down beside the dog, his attention divided between whatever was under there and her. “Get out of here!” he said.

But curiosity overwhelmed her and she leaned down to look, too. Like the bomb on the kitchen table, this one was a tangle of wires and canisters and a clock with flashing numbers. There was time left on this one, though.

Several minutes.

“I can’t believe this,” she murmured.

“And I can’t disarm this one,” Logan said with a groan of frustration.