Guns and Roses (62 page)

Before she could explain, Cam said, “I asked her if I might have the privilege of walking her down the aisle.”

Something she couldn’t quite describe passed between the two men—there was an entire conversation going on there, and then a slight nod from Trevor to Cam, an understanding.

Trevor looked at her, and a grin threatened. “As long as it’s not in that monstrosity masquerading as a dress, we’re good.”

And she laughed, which immediately turned back into hiccupping tears. Before she knew what had happened, Cam had moved away and Trevor held her, his hand sliding into her hair, pressing her gently to his chest. She wasn’t sure what all he murmured, his lips to her temple, but after a while, everything felt right.

She didn’t know how he did it, but she didn’t have to know.

“It’s all going to be okay, isn’t it?” she murmured, and he nodded.

“No one outside the family knows where we’re getting married; the shuttles are lined up for the few we’ve invited, and we have decoys to confuse any stray reporters.” She grimaced at that. As the Contraband Day’s Queen, she was something of local royalty in Lake Charles, which she hadn’t minded. Much. But once she kept getting entwined in disasters after trying to rescue her brother—back when she first met Trevor—she’d become headline gold for every news outlet in the South, and a few national tabloids, as well. It was hell on Trevor, who was a privacy and safety freak. He’d continued murmuring and she tuned in to the rumble of his voice, as he explained, “and the florist doesn’t know the location—she’ll find out only when she arrives that morning, and I’ve got security who’ll monitor her for any outgoing phone calls.”

“So all I have to do is pick out a dress and it’s a go.”

“Think you can do it without terrorizing the owner this time?”

“As long as she keeps that stupid crying assistant away from me, we have a shot at it.”

“Which reminds me, I’m confiscating your gun ’til you get it picked out.”

“Spoilsport.”

~*~

A scant five blocks away, at the Hotel Montelone…

Robert Garrard, or RG as his people knew him, stood at the expanse of windows of the Faulkner suite overlooking the Mississippi and a goodly portion of the Quarter and saw none of it, save his own handsome reflection. He’d paid a lot for that face and had worked hard to maintain the build of a well-to-do, though athletic, businessman. He looked, if one just glanced, like a polished upper-class Ivy League type who played tennis every weekend, or kept fit with rounds of serious golf. He did not look like the kind of guy who’d once gutted people in alleys, who fought with his hands and feet, who had once had the scars to prove you didn’t think twice about messing with him.

Now, he looked… charming. Perfect slacks, expensive shoes, pressed shirt, all costing more than his first car, not to mention the understated-but-exorbitant watch. RG knew how to look the part.

Behind him, in the reflection in the glass, he could see the team he’d assembled.

“I don’t see how the job site is a problem,” Catalina sighed, having said so at least six times since Evan came in an hour earlier. She was a fine specimen of womanhood with particular uses—not in the brains department, which suited RG just fine. She stretched out her lithe little body, mostly to shake Evan off his point rather cruelly, since she knew he had the hots for her and no chance in hell. “It is just one little wedding,” she continued. “A tiny one. In. Married. Out. Bang. Gone.”

“It’s not just one little wedding. It’s the
who
.” Evan gestured frantically toward the computer where there were several images of some local yahoo—a woman—whom everyone blamed for various clusterfucks and yet, she kept getting off scot-free. Josh had fallen asleep. Bored. He’d wake up if RG gave him someone to shoot.

“So, she is klutzy and has caused a ruckus or two,” Catalina argued, “so what? She is just one little woman. What could she possibly do to mess with the job?”

Evan stopped pacing, nearly toppling himself over in the process as he assessed Cat’s baffled expression. He wasn’t about to admit he was afraid of a woman. RG turned his smile into the window as he watched Evan blush three shades of red as the man realized how cowardly he had sounded. “Well,” Evan regrouped, “she’s more than a klutz—she’s a menace. Something always blows up around her.”

“Come now, Evan, look at her,” RG said, nodding toward the last photo enlarged on the screen. “She’s a local beauty queen, and you know how all those women are: vain, shallow, grasping—craving attention. I’d be willing to bet you that she’s some wannabe actress or singer, trying to insert herself into whatever media event she can, to try to gain entrée into any gig that’ll have her. She’s harmless. If she weren’t, with this much attention, I’m certain the feds would have arrested her by now.”

“She’s the Dread Pirate Roberts,” Josh supplied, eyes still closed.

“She’s a pirate?” Catalina asked, rubbing her temple as if trying to massage the brain cells into action.

“Someone who pretends to be something badass, and because people believe that reputation, they’re afraid of her and so treat her as if she’s badass. But it’s all a trick.”

“So she’s
not
really a pirate?” Catalina asked.

“No, honey,” RG said, “she’s simply one of those media seekers. Nothing for us to worry about.”

Evan seemed to ponder that and finally nodded. “Okay, that may be true,” he said, breathing out a sigh. “But I’m still worried about the fiancé.” Evan paced again, looking like a little terrier who’d lost most of its hair and hadn’t the good grace to be embarrassed. “Ex-FBI, ex-spec-ops, God knows who he’s working for now. My intel says that the man terrified the priest into having the wedding there, and Father Patrick isn’t that easily scared. But this Cormier—”

“Cormier?” RG asked, turning now to face the room. He knew that name.

“Right,” Evan answered, pacing back to the computer. “Trevor Cormier.”

RG wanted to kick Evan for focusing on the woman instead of giving him this critical bit of information. “Cormier… as in major ownership of Cormi-Co?”

Evan paused his pacing mid-step, Cat managed to look mildly appreciative, and even Josh woke up, sensing blood in the water. Evan jumped to his computer, researching…

“Yes.
Son
. Famously estranged from his mother, who has the controlling interest in the company. He stays completely out of the business—prefers to keep all ties, except to one of his sisters, Isabelle, completely severed.”

RG smiled. Evan flinched and backed away. Josh sat forward, interested.

“This,” Josh said, “just got very very lucrative.”

“More than the icon?” Catalina asked, studying the five-carat ring RG had given her a few weeks ago. It was paste, but Catalina would never realize, and why waste money if she didn’t know the difference?

“Oh, much, much more,” RG told her, and she smiled.

“But… we’re still going for the icon, right?” Evan asked him.

“Of course. But the rest of this is… as they say here…
lagniappe
.”

“What about the woman?” Evan asked, a one-track mind. As if such a creature mattered. “We planned this on the
one
weekend that the icon was here
and
the church wasn’t being used! We’ve got everything organized, escape routes, back-up plans. And now…
she’s
going to be there, mucking it up!”

“Dear boy, she’s going to be caught up in her frippery and finery and won’t know what happened until we have the icon, her groom, and are gone.” He held up his hand to stop Evan’s interrupting protests. “Look, this can work
for
us. I know something about that family and what her future mother-in-law would do to get rid of her.”

Josh laughed. “She already tried to give someone fifty million to take her.” And when Evan gave him a
you’re full of bullshit
look, Josh shrugged, saying, “Anyone who saw the LSU/Bama game saw that. If you caught that part of the live feed before they squashed it… the mom was actively negotiating to give her to the guy who’d planted the bombs.”

“Fifty
million
?” Evan asked, and RG could tell the potential for danger that the woman and her fiancé might present was starting to matter less and less to the team’s worrywart.

“And that’s a drop in the bucket,” RG said. “Now that it’s definite and given how much the mother hates this Bobbie Faye fluff? She may pay much more. Which reimburses us all of our expenses, plus hefty bonuses and allows us to take our time fencing the icon. This will work in our favor—especially since it’s a last-minute event.”

“How’s that help?” Evan asked.

“They won’t have had time to put in any security details,” Josh answered, and RG nodded.

“But,” RG said, “if you’re so worried about her, Josh will make her his priority while his men handle the fiancé.”

“I don’t know,” Evan muttered, staring at the woman’s photo on the computer screen. “I think we need to hire back-up.”

~*~

Andrea Cormier perched on the edge of her desk, her arms crossed in her impeccable gray silk suit jacket, her beautifully manicured nails digging into her arms to keep from raising her voice. Andrea didn’t raise her voice; it wasn’t necessary. When you owned the largest number of shares—albeit by a smidgeon—of Cormi-Co, a multi-billion dollar communications conglomerate, people hung on your every word. They
waited
, if you wanted them to;
hovered
, expecting to be at your beck and call. It was her due for having built this empire, diode by diode.

She glanced around her penthouse office space, the vast clearstory windows spanning the sixty-foot views on two walls, overlooking all of New York. Standing at her periphery, three of her assistants. Two would remain mute, unless she addressed them, but Deronda James, her executive assistant, would not. Deronda was, perhaps, one of the best assistants Andrea had ever had—sharper than most attorneys, more detail-oriented than a bomb expert, ruthless as a samurai, and as loyal. Tall, mixed-race olive complexion, glossy black curls pulled back into a bun, she was formidable.

But right then, hated.

“I thought we nipped that possibility completely in the bud,” Andrea said, finally having gotten past her fury enough to form a calm, coherent sentence.

“As I mentioned when we called the Vatican, this was never a guaranteed maneuver; at best, preventing them from being married in a Catholic Church would only delay the ceremony until they found another venue. They could have selected
any
venue and had a Catholic priest preside.”

“Our research on that woman”— she would not say her name— “indicated that she felt very strongly about a Catholic wedding. We blocked the churches and made it clear to
all
Catholic priests that she was ex-communicated. What happened?”

“Someone blinked.”

Andrea turned her attention to Deronda, who would not look chagrinned even if she, herself, had been responsible for the first sin.

“We must assume your son—who is, you have to admit, one of the most determined and creative people we know—found a venue, a bishop who, for the right amount of bribe or blackmail, would conveniently ‘overlook’ the memo about Ms. Sumerall’s ex-communication until after the ceremony, when it was too late.”

“And where is this venue?”

“St. Louis Cathedral, in the French Quarter. In three weeks,” Deronda added, knowing that would be her next question. “The same weekend as the French Quarter Festival, which is a smaller version of Mardi Gras, from my best estimates. Big crowds, revelry, music, etc. I’m amazed he managed it, given the timing.”

“Book rooms—”

“I’ve tried,” one of the other assistants piped up. Squeaked, actually. Andrea didn’t bother to learn their names until they’d been there for a few years and had impressed her. Neither of these had.

She lasered the mousey blonde with a glare. “There is no
try
in this business. Buy someone out. Buy the hotel—I don’t care what it takes, but we’ll have rooms—the penthouse suites, of the best they have.”

“Done,” Deronda said, throwing her own glare at the other assistant, whose days were certainly numbered.

Try
. Ha! Not in her world.

Deronda shooed the other two out, and once they were gone, turned to Andrea. “You know you cannot stop him if he’s that determined, Drea.”

Andrea turned her blue-eyed gaze onto Deronda, who had the audacity not to flinch.

“Then we’ll give the courts a reason.”

“Manufacture something? He’ll see through it.”

“No, I mean,
find
something.”

“We’ve had a PI go through her entire background. Every scrap of newsprint, every police record. She has the reputation of not lying; I’d be willing to bet that if there was anything in her past, she’d have admitted it already.”