The Wedding Assignment Read online

  Rae-Anne had worked hard for a long time to chase even the memories of Wiley Cotter away. And now she was faced not only with Wiley himself, but with two other long-legged, dark-haired men whose casual stances and faintly mocking smiles probably masked minds just as razor sharp as Wiley’s.

  She had every reason in the world to be on her guard against that sharpness as Wiley introduced his brother Jack. She still didn’t know what Wiley’s reasons were for coming back into her life like this, but one thing was very clearmaking love to her last night had been just a frill, a diversion.

  She’d let herself imagine—foolishly, illogically—that he’d come back because of her. And now it turned out to have something to do with the FBI. Squaring her shoulders and staying calm as she shook Jack Cotter’s hand and listened to him introducing his colleagues was one of the hardest things Rae-Anne had ever had to do.

  “My boss, Jessie Myers,” Jack was saying, turning to the tall, serious-looking black woman at his side. “And Mack MacGuire, who’s also working on the case.”

  She needed to know so many things about how she’d managed to get caught up in a federal investigation. She needed to think about Rodney, and about the baby, and about what she was going to do if any of Wiley’s accusations about her fiancé turned out to be true.

  But her thoughts kept wandering to Wiley’s handsome face, and to the other stranger in the room, who had taken a chair near the door and seemed to be hanging back at the edges of the meeting, watching them all with observant dark blue eyes.

  “My other brother, Sam,” Wiley said, noting the direction her gaze had taken. “Although why he’s here—”

  “He’s pushy,” Jack put in.

  Sam grinned. “Try inquisitive,” he said.

  Jack glared at both his brothers. “Try remembering who’s running this show, all right?” he said. “This isn’t a Cotter Investigations special here.”

  “Nobody said it was, Jack.” Wiley sounded almost bored, a sure sign, Rae-Anne knew, that he was covering up an intense interest.

  And Sam sounded exactly the same way. “Hey, I’m just along for the ride,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  That slow drawl was so much like Wiley’s. Rae-Anne frowned, wishing she could stick with one mystery at a time. Ten years ago, Wiley hadn’t known where his brother Sam was. And he’d certainly never bothered to introduce her to Jack. But beneath their wrangling, it was clear to her that the three Cotters formed a close family unit. When had that happened? And how?

  She didn’t like the feeling that everyone in the room knew more than she did. She cleared her throat, grateful that she’d bothered to scrub her face and pull her hair into a ponytail. She felt slightly less disheveled and in control of herself as she asked, “Who’s in charge of this meeting?”

  “I am,” Jack Cotter replied, “and I’d like to get on with it. If Wiley had checked in with us last night the way he was supposed to—”

  “I said I’d call as soon as I could,” Wiley cut in. “Circumstances change, little brother. You know that as well as I do.”

  “They seem to change pretty drastically whenever you’re in the picture,” Jack muttered as he turned to Rae-Anne.

  He was the most buttoned-down of the three brothers, she thought, contrasting Jack’s close-cut dark hair and neatly rolled-up sleeves with Wiley’s rougher style and Sam’s halfuntamed look. Jack wouldn’t have looked out of place in a boardroom, while Sam might have been lifted straight out of a rodeo somewhere on the back roads of Texas.

  And Wiley? Where did Wiley belong, and what kind of game had he been playing with her yesterday and last night? His dark gaze stirred her as strongly as ever, but she resisted the temptation to let her eyes linger on his before she turned to listen to Jack.

  “I’m extremely pleased to meet you, of course, Ms. Blackburn,” he was saying. “But I admit I’m a little surprised to see you here. According to the plan—which Wiley did not draw up, I might add, in case he’s managed to give you that impression—we just wanted to sound you out about your fiance’s business operation, to see if there was anything you might be able to tell us.”

  Rae-Anne’s frown deepened. “Sound me out?” she repeated. “I don’t understand. How was dragging me away from my own wedding supposed to do that?”

  She didn’t miss the quick look between Jack Cotter and his boss, or the way Mack MacGuire had started to tap the end of his pencil on the table next to his chair. “Maybe you should fill us in on exactly what happened,” Jessie Myers said slowly. “Your friend Mr. Cotter seems to have been less than forthcoming with us.”

  Oh, God, Rae-Anne thought. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and be alone with her own thoughts, the way she’d done the moment she’d closed the bedroom door between her and Wiley a little while ago. But those thoughts were just going to keep heading wildly off in all directions until she found out what was going on.

  That didn’t mean she was going to share everything that had happened between her and Wiley last night. Hoping she could keep from blushing as she edited out the racy parts of their evening, she gave the group a quick version of yesterday’s adventures.

  When she was done, there was a long silence.

  “He just drove off with you,” Jack said at last.

  “That’s right.”

  “Without even mentioning that he was there in cooperation with the FBI.”

  “I didn’t hear anything about the FBI until just before you all showed up.”

  Jack’s broad chest rose and fell in a sigh that seemed to be exaggerated for effect. This wasn’t the first time he’d butted heads with his stubborn older brother, Rae-Anne thought. She wished she could take more comfort in the fact that other people were mad at Wiley, too.

  “You want to tell us what you’re up to, Wiley?” Jack turned to the corner of the room where Wiley was leaning nonchalantly against a windowsill.

  He shrugged. “I was operating on instinct,” he said. “Rae-Anne looked scared. And the evidence against Dietrich was pretty damning. That was enough to convince me it was better to get her out of the way first and explain things to her later.”

  “Except you didn’t explain things to her, apparently,” Jessie Myers put in.

  Wiley shrugged again. The motion looked easy and unconcerned, and Rae-Anne found her attention being drawn to the breadth of his shoulders under the weathered blue T-shirt he wore with his jeans this morning.

  “She’s getting the explanation part now,” he said.

  Jack started to say something, and so did Mack MacGuire. Rae-Anne could hear Jessie Myers’s tight sigh, and suddenly she felt as though this was all slipping beyond her, into a realm she didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

  “Hold on,” she said, summoning up the voice that had cut through a lot of barroom arguments in her checkered career as a bartender. All three FBI agents turned to look at her, seeming startled by the new edge to her tone.

  “I still don’t know what started all this,” she said. “Why is the FBI investigating Rodney? And why did you think I would be able to help you?”

  “We’re not just investigating Rodney,” Jack said. “This operation is part of a statewide crackdown on illegal gambling. Rodney’s involved in laundering money for the mob, which you may or may not know.”

  “I’m not sure I believe it, but Wiley did mention it.”

  Jack shot his brother a pointed look. “I’m glad to hear he did some of what he told us he would do,” he said. “Did he also mention that Rodney’s hotel business was propped up by mob money when Rodney expanded things too fast a few years ago?”

  “Yes.” She sat down on the neatly made bed, silently relieved that Wiley had thought to tidy things up somewhat. “And he said something about Danielle—about Rodney’s first wife—”

  She still had to force herself to think about it. Rodney could be indecisive sometimes, even vague, when it suited him. But in the two years she’d known him, she’d never seen any
signs of violence in his character. The closest he’d ever come was the tight-lipped coldness he’d shown whenever she’d pressed him to discuss something he didn’t want to talk about. And it was hard to imagine that his silence about Danielle’s death might be covering anything as awful as a knowledge of her murder.

  “The evidence on that is pretty circumstantial,” Jack Cotter was saying. “But we do know that Danielle Dietrich had instituted divorce proceedings and was going after a big slice of Rodney’s pie.”

  “Did she know—about the mob being involved in his business?”

  “It doesn’t look that way, at least at the beginning. Our guess is that when she got down to making actual demands, Rodney came out and told her why he couldn’t hand over the settlement she wanted, and she threatened to blow the whistle on him in retaliation. We think that Rodney—or maybe one of his silent partners—had Danielle taken out of the picture to protect their working arrangement.”

  Rae-Anne shivered in spite of the warmth of the sunny air. She hated this—hated the casual menace and constant threats that were such a part of Wiley’s everyday working life. She didn’t want any part of a world where a woman’s death could be referred to offhandedly as “being taken out of the picture,” or where Rae-Anne herself was just another pawn in a game being played for dangerously high stakes.

  But she had become a part of that world, at least until she could figure out what to do about Rodney.

  If she’d been alone, and free, she’d have had no hesitation at all about hitting the road until she’d found a place she could start again. She’d spent her whole adult life that way, searching, without success, for a place she could feel at home.

  But now everything was different. She had no intention of telling the FBI that she was carrying Rodney Dietrich’s child, but it did make her more willing to stay and finish this conversation than she would otherwise have been.

  “What will happen to Rodney if your investigation goes the way it’s supposed to?” she asked Jack Cotter.

  “He’ll go to jail.”

  “For how long?”

  “A long time, with luck.”

  No one in the room seemed even a little bit sorry about that. None of them, Wiley least of all, seemed to realize how badly her life had been thrown off its track by the FBI’s intrusion into it.

  That made her voice sharper as she said, “And what exactly am I supposed to be helping you with, assuming I’m willing?”

  “We’ve lost our contact inside Rodney’s organization, and so far we haven’t identified who the new mob courier is. Wiley thought you might help us pick up the trail.”

  “Why did he think I would do that?”

  Jack held her eyes steadily. There was something about the middle Cotter brother that she liked, Rae-Anne thought, something that she instinctively recognized as honest and straightforward. She had the feeling that Jack, unlike his older brother, wasn’t in the habit of high-handedly taking over other people’s lives and deciding what was best for them.

  “He thought you would want to know if there was anything shady in Rodney’s background,” Jack was saying. He paused, then asked, “Was he right?”

  “Probably.” She hated to admit it, but Wiley had been right. She could never marry Rodney if she was certain he’d been lying to her about so many important things all along.

  But she wasn’t certain about it yet. And she needed to be, for reasons she wasn’t about to share with the FBI. “What if I agree to help you look for evidence and it turns out Rodney isn’t the guilty party, after all?” she asked.

  Jack looked skeptical. “I’d say you’re pinning your hopes on a star that was likely to fizzle out,” he told her.

  “Even if I am,” Rae-Anne returned, “they’re my hopes. Please,” she added, her voice sounding more urgent than she’d intended. “I need to get to the bottom of this for my own satisfaction. If Rodney’s only peripherally involved, or if the evidence you’ve got is somehow misleading—”

  It could be, she thought. Rodney tended to be easily influenced by people he admired. He’d lost one fortune early in his career by teaming up with the wrong partner. Maybe he wasn’t the criminal the FBI thought. Maybe he’d just wandered into something he didn’t understand, the same way Rae-Anne had.

  She thought about the searing heat of Wiley’s loving last night, and swallowed hard. No matter whether he turned out to be a criminal or not, Rodney had never aroused anything like that kind of passion in her. Even if he turned out to be innocent, she was still going to be marrying a man she loved with less than her whole heart.

  But at least her child would have a father, and a home, and a shot at stability. And there was no way she could dream of a future with Wiley anyway, under any circumstances. He’d seduced his way back into her life for all the wrong reasons, and he didn’t even have the grace to sound sorry about it.

  What he did sound, when he broke into the conversation, was irritated. “I didn’t haul you out of Rodney Dietrich’s way just to have you head straight back there,” he told her.

  “No,” she answered. “You hauled me out of Rodney’s way so I would be more likely to help your brother and his colleagues. Aren’t you happy now, Wiley? You’ve got what you were after.”

  She didn’t miss the flicker in his dark eyes, and knew her double meaning had reached him. He’d been after more than just her cooperation, judging by how he’d acted last night. He’d been looking for a quick recap of the lovemaking they’d once shared so potently.

  And he’d gotten it, too. That was what was making her so angry now. She was still in the grip of the sense of hurt and loss she’d felt when she’d wakened to see that indifferent look on Wiley’s handsome face.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. Rae-Anne could see the corded muscles in his forearms.

  “Jack’s made it clear that what he wants and what I want aren’t necessarily the same thing,” he said. “I wanted to see you free of all that wedding hoopla so you could make up your mind and get on with your life.”

  “I am making up my own mind. I’m deciding to go back and find out what I can about Rodney’s operation, and about his first wife.”

  “The hell you are!” His anger flared suddenly, and she knew she’d been right about how tightly he’d been keeping it in check. “It’s too dangerous, Rae-Anne. The man had his wife murdered for bringing up exactly the kinds of questions you’re talking about asking.”

  “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “I don’t need a videotape to convince me. It’s not safe, and I don’t want you getting involved in it.”

  “Did someone make you my official watchdog when I wasn’t looking?” She could feel herself breathing harder as she held his glittering gaze. Damn it, she thought, it was happening all over again. Whether they were angry or aroused, there was no denying the strength of the connection that sparked between them.

  “You need a watchdog, if you’re thinking about doing something as crazy as this,” Wiley said. “If you had any sense—”

  “Humor me.” Rae-Anne tried to rein her temper in, tried to slow the pounding she could feel in her temples. “Pretend I do have some sense. Pretend I might have my own very good reasons for wanting to get this straightened out to my satisfaction.”

  Pretend I’m pregnant and scared and I can’t imagine what else to do. It was tempting to add the words out loud, just to watch Wiley’s jaw drop as the realization sank in of just how badly her life had been scrambled over the past couple of days. Pretend the man whose baby I’m carrying might be the worst kind of liar, and the man whose simplest touch turns me to jelly inside is up to something I’m only beginning to understand. How likely does that make me to trust anybody’s judgment but my own?

  She didn’t say it out loud, but Wiley seemed to have understood the turmoil in her face. His voice was gentler as he said, “I’ll come with you, then.”

  “You will not.” She felt her cheeks redden as she answered him. The th
ought of being anywhere near Wiley was too distracting even to consider.

  “Jack?” He turned to his brother. “You can’t possibly agree to this.”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s Rae-Anne’s call,” he said. “If she feels safe—”

  “Of course I feel safe.” She said the words quickly, wishing they were truer. “I’ll tell Rodney I just had a bad case of cold feet, and that’s why I didn’t show up at the wedding.”

  And Rodney knew, although no one else did outside her doctor’s office, that even if Rae-Anne had had a very good reason to bolt away from the wedding, she had an even better reason to come back. Surely that would be enough to keep him from suspecting that the FBI might be involved with her disappearance, or with her return.

  She was worried that if Wiley was anywhere near the Dietrich ranch, her attention would be so divided that she might not be able to maintain the facade she was going to need. The tremor that went through her when she met his angry brown eyes was proof enough of that.

  “This is a mistake, Rae-Anne,” he told her tightly.

  “If it is, I’ll take the consequences of it,” she retorted. “Damn it, Wiley, this is the man I agreed to marry. He’s the—prospective father of my children.” She got the word prospective in there just in time, but no one seemed to notice the slip. “I need to do this, and I don’t need your help, no matter how much you think I should want it.”

  Wiley’s low snarl sounded more bearlike than ever. RaeAnne watched him jam his hands into the pockets of his jeans and half turn so that he was glaring out the window instead of at her.

  It should have been a relief to be free of the weight of his gaze. It should have been easier to turn to Jack and the other FBI agents and start talking about details and logistics now that Wiley was seemingly ignoring her.

  But it wasn’t.

  His brooding presence kept nagging at her, demanding her attention, reminding her inescapably of how powerfully the two of them acted on each other. Was he feeling the same things, resisting the intuitive tug that connected them?