Keeper of the Bride

Daniella tilted her head, a gesture he recognized as both inquisitive and flirtatious. “So, you’re a cop?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Bomb Squad? Is that really what you think happened at the church? A bomb?”

“I’m not free to talk about it,” he said. “Not while the investigation’s underway.” Smoothly he turned to Nina. “If you’re okay for the night, I’ll be leaving. Be sure to close those driveway gates. And activate the burglar alarm. I’ll check back with you in the morning.”

As he gave a nod of goodbye, his gaze locked with Nina’s. It was only the briefest of looks, but once again he was taken by surprise at his instinctive response to this woman. It was an attraction so powerful he felt himself at once struggling to pull away.

He did. With a curt good-night, he walked out the front door.

Outside, in the darkness, he stood for a moment surveying the house. It seemed secure enough. With two other people inside, Nina should be safe. Still, he wondered whether those particular two people would be of much help in a crisis. A father soaking in a hot tub and a spandex-and-hormones stepmother didn’t exactly inspire feelings of confidence. Nina, at least, was an intelligent woman; he knew she would be alert for signs of danger.

He drove back to Robert Bledsoe’s house on Ocean View Drive and left the car on a side street around the corner.

With Nina’s keys, he let himself in the front door and called Gillis to arrange for a surveillance team to patrol the area. Then he closed all the curtains and settled down to wait. It was nine o’clock.

At nine-thirty, he was already restless. He paced the living room, then roamed the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway. Any stalker watching the house would expect lights to go on and off in different rooms, at different times. Maybe their man was just waiting for the residents to go to bed.

Sam turned off the living room lights and went into the bedroom.

Nina had left the top dresser drawer hanging open. Sam, pacing the carpet, kept walking back and forth past that open drawer with its tempting glimpse of lingerie. Something black and silky lay on top, and one corner trailed partway out of the drawer. He couldn’t resist the impulse. He halted by the dresser, picked up the item of lingerie, and held it up.

It was a short little spaghetti-strap thing, edged with lace, and designed to show a lot. An awful lot. He tossed it back in and slammed the drawer shut.

He was getting distracted again. This shouldn’t be happening. Something about Nina Cormier, and his reaction to her, had him behaving like a damn rookie.

Before, in the line of duty, he’d brushed up against other women, including the occasional stunner. Women like that spandex bimbo, Daniella Cormier, Nina’s stepmother. He’d managed to keep his trousers zipped up and his head firmly screwed on. It was both a matter of self-control as well as self-preservation. The women he met on the job were usually in some sort of trouble, and it was too easy for them to consider Sam their white knight, the masculine answer to all their problems.

It was a fantasy that never lasted. Sooner or later the knight gets stripped of his armor and they’d see him for what he really was: just a cop. Not rich, not brilliant. Not much of anything, in fact, to recommend him.

It had happened to him once. Just once. She’d been an aspiring actress trying to escape an abusive boyfriend; he’d been a rookie assigned to watch over her. The chemistry was right. The situation was right. But the girl was all wrong. For a few heady weeks, he’d been in love, had thought she was in love.

Then she’d dropped Sam like a hot potato.

He’d learned a hard but lasting lesson: romance and police work did not mix. He had never again crossed that line while on the job, and he wasn’t about to do it with Nina Cormier, either.

He turned away from the dresser and was crossing to the opposite end of the room when he heard a thump.

It came from somewhere near the front of the house.

Instantly he killed the bedroom lights and reached for his gun. He eased into the hallway. At the doorway to the living room he halted, his gaze quickly sweeping the darkness.

The streetlight shone in dimly through the windows. He saw no movement in the room, no suspicious shadows.

There was a scraping sound, a soft jingle. It came from the front porch.

Sam shifted his aim to the front door. He was crouched and ready to fire as the door swung open. The silhouette of a man loomed against the backlight of the streetlamp.

“Police!” Sam yelled. “Freeze!”

Chapter Four

THE SILHOUETTE FROZE.

“Hands up,” ordered Sam. “Come on, hands up!”

Both hands shot up. “Don’t hurt me!” came a terrified plea.

Sam edged over to the light switch and flipped it on. The sudden glare left both men blinking. Sam took one look at the man standing in front of him and cursed.

Footsteps pounded up the porch steps and two uniformed cops burst through the doorway, pistols drawn. “We got him covered, Navarro!” one of them yelled.

“You’re right on time,” muttered Sam in disgust. “Forget it. This isn’t the guy.” He holstered his gun and looked at the tall blond man, who was still wearing a look of terror on his face. “I’m Detective Sam Navarro, Portland Police. I presume you’re Dr. Robert Bledsoe?”

Nervously Robert cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s me. What’s going on? Why are you people in my house?”

“Where’ve you been all day, Dr. Bledsoe?”

“I’ve been—uh, may I put my hands down?”

“Of course.”

Robert lowered his hands and glanced cautiously over his shoulder at the two cops standing behind him. “Do they, uh, really need to keep pointing those guns at me?”

“You two can leave,” Sam said to the cops. “I’m all right here.”

“What about the surveillance?” one of them asked. “Want to call it off?”

“I doubt anything’s coming down tonight. But hang around the neighborhood. Just until morning.”

The two cops left. Sam said, again, “Where’ve you been, Dr. Bledsoe?”

With two guns no longer pointed at his back, Robert’s terror had given way to righteous anger. He glared at Sam. “First, you tell me why you’re in my house! What is this, a police state? Cops breaking in and threatening homeowners? You have no authority to be trespassing on my property. I’ll have your ass in a sling if you don’t produce a search warrant right now!”

“I don’t have a warrant.”

“You don’t?” Robert gave an unpleasantly triumphant laugh. “You entered my house without a warrant? You break in here and threaten me with your macho cop act?”

“I didn’t break in,” Sam told him calmly. “I let myself in the front door.”

“Oh, sure.”

Sam pulled out Nina’s keys and held them up in front of Robert. “With these.”

“Those—those keys belong to my fiancée! How did you get them?”

“She lent them to me.”