The Bride's Bodyguard. Beth Cornelison

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СКАЧАТЬ told me to hide you and keep the bead safe at all costs.” He narrowed a sharp gaze on her and extended his hand. “In fact, you should give me the bead for safekeeping.”

      Her head throbbed, and she swallowed the urge to scream her frustration with the endless riddles. “What bead?”

      Jake’s jaw tightened, and his dark eyes reflected his own frustration and impatience with the situation. “The one the terrorists who crashed your party were after, of course! The one you’re protecting for Brent. Give it to me.” He wiggled his fingers, urging her compliance. “Come on, Paige. Brent asked me to guard it. He said something about national security.”

      Paige barked a humorless laugh. “What does some bead have to do with national security? And what makes you think I have this…this bead? ”

      Squeezing his eyes shut, Jake massaged his right knee again and exhaled an irritated huff.

      “Brent said you have what those guys who shot him were after,” he said quietly, clearly struggling to keep his tone calm, though tension vibrated from him in palpable waves. “That’s why I got you out of the church so fast. According to Brent, you have what the terrorists want, and it is my job to keep this bead—whatever it is—safe.”

      His wording smacked her between the eyes, and she flopped back on the seat, her chest aching, as if from a physical blow. “That’s what he said? Keep the bead safe? That’s why you hustled me out of there so fast? Why you risked your life to save me?”

      Protect the bead. Not her. She was merely a pawn in Brent’s dangerous secret agenda.

      Jake rolled his eyes and groaned. “Isn’t that what I just said? This conversation is getting old, Paige. Just give me the bead, okay?”

      Something inside her snapped. Her patience, her composure, her illusions of her safe, orderly world shattered, and she grabbed her head, fisting her hands in her hair, further destroying the salon styling she’d received that morning. “I don’t have any bead! I don’t know what Brent thinks I have or why he told you I have it!” She hated her shrill tone, her loss of control. But getting shot at, learning the safety of some bead was more important to your fiancé than your safety, having your entire world thrown into chaos did that to a girl. “I don’t know why armed men attacked my wedding! And I don’t know why my fiancé thinks he has something to do with national security! None of this makes sense to me!”

      Jake’s head snapped up, his attention drawn to something out the back window.

      “What—”

      Before she could finish her question, he grabbed her arm and yanked her back toward the floor. Paige gritted her teeth. She was getting tired of his manhandling.

      “Stay down!” he shouted as he lowered the side window and leveled his handgun at some threat outside.

      She heard the roar of an engine, too loud and high-pitched to be a car. It sounded more like a motorcycle. Then a hail of bullets hammered the limo, shattering more windows and pocking the far wall of the back compartment.

      “I thought you said we’d lost them!”

      Jake spared her only a brief glance. “Clearly, they found us again.”

      He pitched backward as the limo veered suddenly and bumped along the shoulder. His eyes widened, and he bit out a curse. Lunging forward, he climbed over her and shouted, “Hold on to something! Our driver’s been hit.”

      Jake turned on the seat and rocked backward. With a hard kick, he knocked out the Plexiglas window partition between them and the front seat.

      Paige scrambled across the floor, groping for a handhold as the vehicle swerved and bumped. She grabbed the pit of a wet-bar cup holder over her head and braced her feet on the long side seat on the opposite side of the compartment. Jake slid headfirst through the opening he’d created, dragging the driver— oh, God, was he dead?—off the steering wheel and into the passenger seat.

      Paige bit down hard on her bottom lip, praying for a miracle, praying she and Jake weren’t about to be shot or killed in a car crash. Praying she’d wake up from this far-too-realistic nightmare.

      Bile rose in her throat, and tears burned her eyes as two truths clarified in her mind.

      Brent was involved in something terrible and clandestine.

      And her fiancé's dangerous secret might cost her her life.

       Chapter 2

      Jake fought the limo back under control and steered onto the highway. Checking the mirrors for any more surprise assailants, he took the first exit and headed in the opposite direction from the way the motorcyclist departed.

      At his earliest opportunity, Jake pulled the limo off the road and stopped long enough to check the driver for signs of life. He pressed his fingers to the man’s carotid artery, despite the glaring hole in his head that screamed proof that the driver was dead.

      Paige appeared at the windowless gap between the front and back seats. “Why’d we stop? Is the driver—?”

      “Don’t look,” he barked, harsher than he needed to, but tension had him wound tight. Tact was not at the top of his priorities at the moment. “Get down and stay there. You don’t need this image in your head, and I don’t know when we may get attacked again.”

      The rustle of satin and lace told him she’d complied.

      “So what do we do now? Where are we going?” The tremble of fear in her voice sucker punched his gut.

      “This is a work in progress, darlin'. I’ll tell you when I know. First thing we have to do is get rid of this limo. It’s conspicuous as hell.” He whipped a quick glance over his shoulder to the backseat. Paige’s wide green eyes made her look vulnerable, yet he also saw keen intelligence and stubborn determination in her expression that told him she was no frail flower that would wilt at any moment. Good. If this situation was half as dangerous as the past thirty minutes purported, she’d need a little starch in her to survive the coming days.

      “First thing you need to do is lose the dress.”

      “Excuse me?” she said, her tone rife with offense.

      He dismissed her misunderstanding with a twist of his mouth and a short sigh. “You do have other clothes, don’t you? Like in a suitcase in the trunk? Packed for your honeymoon?”

      “Oh…right.”

      He heard her embarrassment in her voice, and though he kept his eyes on the road, he imagined her ivory cheeks, flushed red as they had been the night before at the rehearsal dinner when she was the butt of her friends’ and family’s good-natured ribbing. Her modesty and discomfiture had struck him as unusual for a woman with so much going for her—beauty, brains, wealth, ambition and family and friends who clearly adored her. Most women he knew with so much going for them seemed to feel they were entitled to their privileged lives.

      For someone who’d scraped and fought for everything he had, such arrogance was a huge turnoff to Jake.

      He cleared his throat. “Not only is the dress conspicuous СКАЧАТЬ