Bridegroom Bodyguard by LISA CHILDS Read Free Book Online

contact with his. He didn’t let her go, continuing to hold her hand.
    Didn’t he want to go inside? Hadn’t that been the point of coming to Brenda’s estate?
    Parker glanced around the area, his gaze scanning the street before he peered through the wrought-iron gate at the dark mansion on the other side.
    “I wish I had Cujo,” he murmured.
    “Cujo?” Just how badly had he been concussed that he was longing for a fictional dog?
    “My sister-in-law’s former K9 German shepherd,” he explained. “He’s great at sniffing out bombs.”
    “You think there could be one inside?” she asked, turning her attention to that large brick residence. “But nobody could have gotten past security.”
    He studied the panel now, as if trying to determine if it had been tampered with. Still holding her hand, he lifted it toward the panel.
    She pressed her index finger to the glass. A light flashed as the machine read her print. The lock clicked, then a motor revved and metal rattled as the gate drew open. Parker stepped inside but held Sharon back with a hand on her shoulder.
    “You can’t leave me out here!” she said, her voice cracking with fear as she imagined being alone in the dark.
    It brought back memories of another lonely night long ago. She had been in the dark that night, hidden away. She reached out and clutched his arm.
    “Don’t leave me!” She had said the same thing that night but she had been too late. “You need me to open the house door, too.”
    “I won’t leave you here,” he assured her. “But you have to be careful. We don’t know what we’re going to find inside.”
    Her stomach muscles tightened with fear and dread. “You think she’s dead?”
    “It would have been on the news,” he said, “if the judge had been killed or even if she’d gone missing.”
    She shook her head. “She had taken a leave of absence from work.”
    “Brenda Foster?” he asked, obviously incredulous.
    He wasn’t the only one who had been surprised. Brenda had taken only a couple weeks off after having Ethan.
    “I think she was writing her memoirs or some kind of book,” Sharon said. “She told me that I would have to do some proofreading for her when she was ready. But she hadn’t asked me to look at anything yet.”
    “How long had she been off work?” he asked.
    “Her leave started two weeks ago,” Sharon said, “so nobody at the courts would have been alarmed that they hadn’t heard from her.”
    “Would anyone else?”
    “Are you asking me about her boyfriends or lovers?” Irritation eased some of her fear. He had kissed her, but now he was questioning her about another woman’s social life. Of course, he had only kissed Sharon to prove the point that she couldn’t be the mother of his child and not because he had actually been attracted or interested in her enough to want to kiss her.
    “I’m asking if anyone would have reported her missing if they hadn’t heard from her.”
    Guilt clutched her at the realization that she had been so petty as to be jealous of another woman—a woman she had always respected. But Sharon was one of very few who’d actually been close to the judge. “I don’t know....”
    She didn’t know who would report her missing, either. With the hours she worked, she had little time to socialize. Not that she had ever socialized much. She had been more focused on school and studying and work than on making friends.
    “Probably me,” she said. As Ethan’s primary caregiver, she was closer to his mother than anyone else. “But she told me to go to you if I didn’t hear from her—and to trust no one else.”
    “Not even the police?”
    She shrugged and then shivered. “No one but you.”
    Parker turned back toward the mansion. He cursed and reluctantly admitted, “I should have let Logan send backup with me.”
    “But there’s no hit out on Brenda,” she reminded him. “There is no reason to think anyone’s trying to kill her.”
    “There