It Happened One Wedding (19 page)

Michael gave her a slight smile, as if to say that this was self-evident. “I wouldn’t have given you the card if he wasn’t.”

Sidney stared down at the card after he left. She flipped it over and saw that Tyler had written her a message.

Maybe next time we can meet for more than two minutes?

Well, this was . . . unexpected. A quick Google search showed that he was a partner at Kendall & Jameson, a successful boutique labor and employment law firm. Which meant she could check off that box already: he was settled in his career. But beyond that, this Tyler guy came with a “recommended” label; he’d been referred by someone she trusted.

Perhaps she’d just been handed her first real lead in the search for Mr. Right.

WITH FRIDAY CAME
the end of a long workweek for Vaughn.

He and Huxley had picked up a new assignment, after receiving a tip from a Chicago nightclub owner who claimed that the head of the city code compliance department had demanded from him a cash payoff in exchange for not enforcing a large fine for what the club owner insisted was a bogus code violation. As part of the investigation, the plan was that an undercover agent would pose as the club’s manager, and together he and the owner would make the payoff to the head inspector. Unfortunately, Vaughn was already working undercover in the Pritchett investigation, and since agents worked hard not to be involved in multiple UC roles at the same time, they had decided that Huxley would pose as the nightclub’s manager—the younger agent’s first time taking on a speaking undercover role after a botched attempt three years ago that had been stymied by a poorly timed case of the stomach flu.

To put it mildly, Huxley was stoked.

The investigation had gotten a little more intense this afternoon, when two different code inspectors had showed up at the nightclub to “remind” the owner of his (bogus) violation and also to reiterate that they had the authority to shut down his club at any time. That had put everything on fast-forward, and Vaughn had spent the rest of his day assisting Huxley in pulling together his undercover legend and getting everything set up with the tech team and the backup squad so that they could meet with the city inspector tomorrow for the payoff.

After that, he and Huxley had met Cade for their workout. With the triathlon only three weeks away, their workouts had intensified—today they’d swum for thirty minutes, had run for forty-five, and then had lifted weights for an hour. Vaughn had walked out of the FBI gym tired and ready to call it a night.

Admittedly, he’d been feeling a little off all week. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him, he just felt . . . irritated. Unsettled. He looked forward to an evening alone, so he could shake off whatever his problem was, reset, and get back on his game.

But when he was driving home, he received a text message that changed all that.

One word from Sidney.

HELP.

 • • • 

SIDNEY OPENED HER
front door and found six-foot-one, nearly two hundred pounds of pissed-off FBI agent glaring at her.

“Never,
ever
do that again,” Vaughn said.

“Okay, okay. I told you—I’m sleep-deprived. I wasn’t thinking. Sheesh,” And, point of fact, she’d already apologized after his first lecture.

Yes, she’d screwed up. She’d texted Vaughn
Help
, and then had heard her teakettle whistling on the stove. She’d left her phone in the bedroom and had headed downstairs into the kitchen—admittedly, in hindsight this was absentminded, but,
hello
, she was operating on about an hour’s worth of sleep here—and by the time she’d sliced her fresh lemon for the tea, then had noticed her wilting flowers outside and had gone out to water them, and
then
had returned upstairs, she’d discovered that her text message had caused a bit of a hullabaloo with Vaughn, who had been trying to reach her.

“I’d already called in your number to the command room, so I could track you down by your cell phone,” he said, stepping inside her house.

“Is that even legal?”

He glared again.

Sidney smiled sweetly. “What I meant to say was, thank you, Agent Roberts. I’m so appreciative of your concern for my well-being.”

Vaughn stepped closer, putting one hand on the small of her back as he stared down into her eyes. “Just don’t scare me like that again, Sinclair. Understood?”

Something about the seriousness on his face—such an uncharacteristic look for him—put a warm feeling in her stomach. “Understood,” she said, her voice suddenly husky.

Then there it was, a loud double
beep
at the top of the stairs, right outside her bedroom.

She rested her forehead against Vaughn’s chest and groaned. “Please. Just make it stop.”

Her upstairs smoke alarm had started chirping last night around midnight, going off about every ten minutes. She assumed that it needed a new battery, so she’d thrown on a pair of jeans and had walked to a 24-hour convenience store a few blocks away. She’d bought a couple of 9V batteries, then had come home and pulled out her handy-dandy stepladder. The problem was, she couldn’t get the damn casing off. Granted, she didn’t have the best grip, because the ceilings in her turn-of-the-century brownstone were high and she’d had to stand on her tiptoes, but the stupid thing wouldn’t budge.
Then it had stopped around five
A.M
., apparently just to mock her, and she’d gone off to work thinking maybe she was in the clear. But nope—the
beep-beep
had started up again this evening, after she’d changed out of her work clothes and had just been getting ready to settle in with her parents’ wedding albums and a nice cup of chamomile tea.

In her hour of need, she’d texted Vaughn.

“You know, those cases pretty much just pop right off,” he told her.

Yes, thank you, she was aware that this was
supposed
to be how things worked. She’d been up at two
A.M.
last night, Googling the problem and watching umpteen videos with stupid smiling men on stepladders who’d explained how to change the battery on a smoke detector. But none of the stupid smiling men—not a one—had said what to do in the apparently unlikely event that the case did not, in fact, “just pop right off.”

“It’s stuck,” she said.

“Did you turn it the correct way?” he asked. “A good way to remember is—”

“—if you ‘righty-tighty, lefty-loosey’ me right now, Roberts, I swear I will bite you again. The thing is
stuck
.”

Grinning, he chucked her under the chin. “All right. I’ll check it out.”

Vaughn followed her upstairs, where her stepladder sat underneath the smoke detector outside her bedroom. He climbed up, reached for the smoke detector, and gave it a twist.

Nothing.

“It’s stuck,” he said, frowning.

She snorted. “Not exactly a newsflash, buddy.” When he stared down at her, she smiled and touched his knee. “And what I meant by that was, thank you
so
much for rushing over here to help me figure out this mystery.”

“So saucy,” he said, shaking his head. He turned back to the smoke detector and scrutinized it for a moment. “Ah. There’s the problem. Whoever painted your ceiling was sloppy—they painted over the rim of this thing and that probably sealed it shut.”

He reached up and twisted again, harder—Sidney was satisfied to see that even Captain America here had to put some effort into the task—and then it popped off.

“Thank. God.” She hurried into her bedroom and grabbed one of the new 9V batteries off her dresser. She handed it to Vaughn, who changed it out for the old battery, twisted the casing back on, and then climbed down the ladder.

“That should do it, but I’ll stick around to make sure,” he said. “We might as well do the downstairs smoke detector, too. Who knows the last time the previous owners changed it.”

He grabbed her stepladder and carried it downstairs, providing Sidney a nice opportunity to admire the way his tall, leanly muscular frame filled out his suit. It wasn’t even that well-cut of a suit—
mmm
, the things she could do with this man in the men’s department at Barneys—but it didn’t matter. Knowing what was underneath the clothes, and just seeing him be so . . . capable, was enough to have her giving him a long once-over.

Downstairs, they discovered that the smoke detector there was sealed with paint, too. With a hard twist, Vaughn got it open.

“I was planning to order a pizza tonight,” Sidney said, while throwing away the old batteries. “If you don’t have any plans, you’re welcome to stay—my treat as a thank-you.” She smiled innocently. “I even promise to keep my hands to myself if you’re worried about your seven-day rule.”

“I’ve realized the seven-day rule is superfluous with you,” he said, sounding wry.

She wasn’t sure what to make of that answer. “So that’s a . . . yes?”

“As long as you don’t mind me getting comfortable. Long day at work.” He took off his jacket and threw it over the back of one of her counter stools, yanked off his tie, and then loosened the buttons at his neck.

Keep going.

Sidney cleared her throat. “What do you like on your pizza?”

She placed their order and then opened a bottle of chianti. “You said you had a long day at work? How so?” She poured them each a glass.

“Huxley and I picked up a new investigation. We have to move fast with this one, so there was a lot of hustling to make sure everything is set.”

“You can work undercover in two different cases at the same time?”

As they moved into the living room, he explained that his partner would be handling the undercover work this time. That led to an amusing story about how Huxley and his fiancée, also a special agent, had first gotten together after pretending to be a couple during a sting operation that had taken place at a restaurant.

He took a seat on the couch and set his wineglass on the table. “What are these?”

“Oh. My parents’ wedding albums.” She’d forgotten she’d left them out. “I was planning to look through them tonight. I’ve been thinking about what to do for Isabelle’s ‘something old.’ You know, because brides are supposed to have ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.’ I thought it would be nice if she could have something that our mother wore on
her
wedding day. Unfortunately, I found out this week that one of my father’s ex-wives pitched all my mom’s wedding things. Supposedly, it was an accident—I guess with the high turnover of wives in that house, something was bound to get lost in the shuffle.” She shook her head in both frustration and disappointment. Then she managed a half-smile at Vaughn. “I’m just a little ticked off about that, if you can’t tell.”

“Understandably so.”

She sighed. “Anyway . . . now I’m thinking that I’ll put an old photo of our mom in a locket, and Isabelle can wear that instead. Or carry it in her purse.” She shrugged. “It’s not the best idea, but it’s all I could come up with.”

“I’m sure your sister will think it’s great.” Vaughn pointed to the albums. “Can I take a look?”

The question surprised her. “Of course.”

He picked up one of the albums and leaned back against the couch. Sidney scooted closer to him as he opened it to the first page, a photograph of her mother standing in front of a window while looking down at her bouquet.

Sidney smiled nostalgically. “I used to look at these albums all the time when I was younger, but I haven’t seen them for years.”

Vaughn turned the page to a candid shot of her mother laughing with one of her bridesmaids. “You’re right. Isabelle does look a lot like her. But you have her smile.” He pointed. “I can practically hear her making some dry quip to this woman here as the photographer snapped the shot.”

“That was her best friend, Ginny Gastel,” Sidney said. “And you’re probably right. I remember her and my mother laughing a lot whenever they were together.”

Vaughn turned the page to a photograph of Sidney’s father lined up with his groomsmen. He grinned at the sight of the men dressed in ’70s gray tuxedoes with ruffled shirts. “Looking slick, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Now
that
outfit I could handle being accidentally misplaced,” Sidney said.

Vaughn pointed to the photo on the next page. “I’m guessing these are your grandparents? Will I be meeting any of them at the wedding?”

They went through both albums, with Sidney next to him on the couch, legs tucked underneath her. The pizza came just as they were winding down, and they decided to eat in the living room while watching some action movie that made Vaughn roll his eyes at the portrayal of the FBI characters.

“Come on. Where is his backup squad?” he said to the TV.

Sidney was curled up on the couch, feeling quite cozy after those two glasses of wine. Her lack of sleep the previous night was definitely catching up with her. “Do you always have backup?” she asked, leaning her head against him.

He moved his arm so that she could rest against his chest. “All the time. The FBI loves overwhelming people with manpower and firepower.”

“Good.” In her drowsy state, this suddenly was very important to her, knowing that he was as safe as possible while doing his extraspecial agent thing.

Her eyes felt heavy, so she decided to shut them for just a teeny tiny moment. The last thing she remembered was feeling Vaughn’s fingers stroking up and down on her arm in a light, soothing caress.

 • • • 

A FEW MINUTES
after Vaughn felt Sidney’s body relax against his chest, she shifted and got even more comfortable, using his thigh as a pillow. He brushed her hair off her face, smoothing his fingers over the long, coppery strands.

The movie only had about ten minutes left. When it was over, Vaughn turned off the television, which caused Sidney to stir. She turned onto her back, her head still resting on his leg, and looked up at him.

She reached up and sunk her fingers into the back of his hair. “Stay tonight.”

Looking down at her, Vaughn couldn’t think of one reason why he shouldn’t. Being with her tonight had eased that irritated, unsettled feeling he’d had all week. “As long as you promise that your crazy future brother-in-law isn’t going to show up and start yelling at me again tomorrow morning.”

She laughed at that, and then they both laughed even harder when Vaughn did his
Oh-My-God
impression of Simon walking in on him in the shower. And when they made it to the bedroom and he pulled Sidney into his arms, he couldn’t help but think just how
good
it always was with her.

Something felt different between them as she led him to the bed. Instead of the impatient need to have her naked that he’d always felt before, tonight he took his time undressing her. He noticed little things he hadn’t before, like the scattering of freckles across the top of her shoulders, which he kissed as he slid the straps of her bra down her arms.