Bridegroom Bodyguard by LISA CHILDS

moved from behind the desk to join the woman at the door. But she didn’t look at him; she was focused on the laptop instead. How could she ignore Parker Payne? How could any woman? He turned toward Sharon and studied her face. “Are you really all right?”
    She nodded again. Physically, she was fine. Emotionally, she was a mess. But it wasn’t just over finding another dead body. It was over the suspicion that had begun to niggle at her.
    Why had Parker called this woman to mess with the security system? To cover his tracks?
    And Sharon had left Ethan with his family. If Parker couldn’t be trusted, could she trust any of the Paynes?
    “I—I should get back to Ethan,” she said. “He’ll be afraid if he wakes up and I’m not there.”
    “Ethan?” The young woman’s breath caught, and she stared at Sharon. “Is that...your baby’s name?”
    Parker hadn’t told anyone that Sharon wasn’t the boy’s mother; he had told them only that he had to talk to the judge, for whom Sharon worked. He hadn’t told them the reason specifically, only that Judge Foster might have some involvement or information about why someone wanted him and Sharon dead.
    Judge Foster couldn’t help them now. Not when she had already become a victim....
    But whose victim?
    “Ethan is my son,” Parker told the woman. “You could have met him at the hospital if you’d been there....”
    If they meant anything to each other, why hadn’t she been at the hospital when he had been wounded in that explosion? He was obviously hurt that she hadn’t come to see him, so this woman was important to him.
    If Sharon had been involved with him, she would have rushed to his side. Heck, she wasn’t involved with him, but she had rushed to the hospital as soon as she had seen the news of the explosion at Payne Protection. Of course, she had been trying to find him anyway because the two weeks had already ended with no word from Brenda.
    Now she knew why....
    “I was there,” the woman replied.
    Parker’s brow furrowed. “You were? Then why didn’t you come see me?”
    She shrugged, but her thin shoulders were tense. “What do you want to know from the security system?”
    He sighed before replying, “I want to know who was here last.”
    “Sharon Wells,” she replied.
    Sharon shuddered. She wished she hadn’t come along with Parker; she would have rather cut off and given him her finger than see what she had behind the desk.
    “Before tonight,” Parker specified. “Who was the last one here?”
    “Sharon Wells,” she repeated. “Two weeks ago.”
    Parker turned toward her, and now he looked suspicious of her with the intensity of his blue-eyed stare. “You were the last one here?”
    “Two weeks ago was when I packed up some of Ethan’s stuff and took the cash Brenda gave me to use the past two weeks,” she said. “But I couldn’t have been the last one to see her...”
    “Alive?”
    Knowing what that meant, she shook her head. If she had been the last one to see the judge alive, she would have been the one who killed her. If that was what Parker thought, the police would think that, too.
    Sirens blared as police cars, lights flashing, sped through the open gate and up to the house. If Sharon was arrested, she had no hope of ever seeing Ethan again.
    Panicking, she clutched Parker’s arm. “Brenda wasn’t alone when I was here last,” she said. “Her bodyguard was with her.”
    And there was no way she could have overpowered that gorilla to hurt Brenda. There was no way she could have hurt Brenda or anyone else. Parker had to believe her. But why would he when she had begun to doubt him?
    Even now, she had only this woman’s word that she was the last one who had come in or out of the house. She could have erased other names; she could have erased Parker’s. Maybe he hadn’t really needed her to let him inside the house; maybe he had brought her along only to help him cover his tracks. Maybe he’d been only using her